I've read a lot of explanations on this: "if some men are doctors, and some doctors are tall, does it follow that some men are tall" (let us assume that tall means over six feet in height, to make it absolute) and everyone says "no, all the tall doctors may be women" and I say "hang on a sec.. who introduced women into the equation? stop taking your set knowledge of tthe world population to be men and women, because this statement doesnt mention women, so why do you propose they exist?" Why do people propose women exist when giving their answer to this question? Why do we not operate entirely within the bounds ofthe question? If I rewrote this question such that: "there's a set of objects that are all men, some of the men are doctors, some of the doctors are tall" then it logically follows that some men are tall.. But then people say "but the original proposition didnt say that all the objects were men; youu invented that.. I don't see how I did? When I deal with programming a computer, and I have a scope where some variables are defined and available, I have only what was defined in that scope to work with.. To me, this question first defines a man, then declares some to have a doctor attribute, then some doctors to have a tall attribute. I don't see where women, non doctors, short people etc come into it, other than from our brains adding additional information not present in the universe of the original question? Can someone explain the error in my reasoning?
I would think the difference is to do with your analogy to programming. In programming you need to define the universe up front. Here you defined it as "All men". But in the casual language of this riddle the universe is set by our understanding of reality, unless specifically told otherwise by the riddle. And since the riddle does not set the universe as "All men", one is justifed in considering the applicable universe to be "All people - men and women". So I would say the "error" is in your analogy to programming.
You have the "men" set. A subset of that are doctors, and a subset of that are tall. In this universe, some men are tall only if the "men" set constitute the universe. Using that logic, let's study the definition of "some": "Some" can include the entire subset. Since you have not specified an occupation other than doctors, nor a height other than tall, aren't forced to conclude that all men are tall doctors?
You do not provide any premise that this "set of objects that are all men" is the only existent set. So the tall doctors could still be some unknown set, women or otherwise.
In the abstract, a doctor does not have to be man or woman. A doctor is just a doctor. Now, it's not given that "all doctors are men", so it's required to allow the possibility that some doctors are not men. There are only "things", with attributes. "doctor" is an attribute of a thing. "man" is an attribute of a thing. "tall" is an attribute of a thing. The attributes are independent, except as defined by the given premises.
