Inverse past hypothetical conditional statement

Question

I was reading an article about one of the Boston Marathon terrorists in which the boxing coach of one the terrorists tried to make the statement that his pupil was an accomplished boxer, which was a necessary condition (although not necessarily a sufficient condition) for his pupil to have made it to the Olympic Games trials (that took place in Salt Lake City for that go round.)

Tsarnaev would have to have been an accomplished boxer to have made it to Salt Lake
City.

The way I read this, there are the logical components

A = Tsarnaev was an accomplished boxer

B = possibly some other condition that had to have happened (NOTE: this could be null)

C = (he) made to Salt Lake City

in which there is the implication (so long as there are no other possibilities for C to have happened from other logical components)

A & B => C

so the inverse hypothetical statement is

C => A

It seems that the grammar used here is wrong, and that it should be

Tsarnaev { must ; had to } have been an accomplished boxer to have made it to Salt Lake City.

It should be noted, that it should not be

Tsarnaev had had to have been an accomplished boxer to have made it to Salt Lake City.

(I will do another post concerning the perfect aspect of "have to".)

Dave_anon · Accepted Answer

Hi

Interesting sentence!

I think it is that, at some time in past, "Tsarnaev is a good boxer" would need to have been true in order for him to get to Salt Lake City. And the tenses imply that this did not in fact happen

If that's so, it would be: ((A ? B) & ~A) => ~B

- Only if he had been an accomplished boxer would he have made it to Salt Lake City

Dave

Dave_anon · Answer

Here's a quote from London that I liked:

- A perfectly respected thirty second silence. It says that, if you're trying to scare people, don't pick on marathoners

Dave

Swampwiz · Answer

It seems that he did make it to Salt Lake City, which is that way I interpreted the poor use of grammar.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/boxing/dead-boston-marathon-bombing-suspect-tamerlan-tsarnaev-had-174715975--box.html

I see your logic here - that making it to Salt Lake City implies that he was an accomplished boxer, and vice versa. However, the case could be that he was an accomplished boxer, but still did not make it.

{ A => B } => { !B => !A }

OR

[ { A => B } & !A ] => !B

(As a C language family computer programmer, I like to use ! for not.)

Dave_anon · Answer

Yes, I see that quite often. In programming, old-fashioned, I still tend to do <>

Best regards, Dave

Inverse past hypothetical conditional statement

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