Final answer:
In conditional statements, an antecedent presents a sufficient condition for the necessary consequent condition. The necessary condition must be met for the proposition to hold true, and 'suggestion' is closest in meaning to a hypothesis.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept of necessary and sufficient conditions pertains to the structure of conditional statements, commonly expressed in if-then format. In such statements, the antecedent (if part) provides a sufficient condition for the consequent (then part), which is the necessary condition.
For statement 1 ('You must complete 120 credit hours to earn a bachelor's degree'), the 120 credit hours are necessary to graduate, meaning without it, graduation cannot occur. In statement 2 ('If you expect to graduate, then you must complete 120 credit hours'), expecting to graduate is not sufficient on its own for the necessary condition (earning 120 credit hours) to be fulfilled. To address the strawman fallacy, it is a misleading argumentative technique that oversimplifies or misrepresents an opposing position to refute it more easily. Finally, the closest meaning to hypothesis among the given options is 'suggestion' (option d), as a hypothesis is a tentative explanation or proposition that can be tested through further investigation.