Translate the statement into symbolic form using the letters

Question

If Trump hid the phone transcript, then he should be impeached or should resign. (H,I,R)

Answer 1

H ⊃ (I v R)

The middle symbol is called a conditional and means "if then" or "on the condition that, then" So since the argument is if Trump hid the transcript then he should be impeached or resigned, the conditional goes after the H because it is on the condition H that Trump should either be impeached or resign. The v symbol means "or". So, it goes between I and R because the claim is that Trump should be impeached or should resign. I v R is in parentheses to tell us that the conditional applies to both I and R. For example, if it had been written

H ⊃ I v R we would not know if the statement meant "If Trump hid the tapes then he should be impeached or Resign" or if it meant "Either If Trump should be impeached if he hid the tapes, or he should resign." In the second case the claim is that he should resign even if he did not hide the tapes. The conditional would only apply to impeachment. Symbolically, it would look like this: ( H ⊃ I ) v R. In this case the parentheses tell us that the conditional "If Trump hid the tapes, then . . ." applies only to impeachment.