Final answer:
The statement is true; formal logic often deals with problems of necessity and sufficiency, evaluating whether the logical forms of arguments like modus ponens and modus tollens correctly infer necessary and sufficient conditions.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question of whether formal logic is often a necessity/sufficiency problem can be answered with true. Formal logic, which is the study of reasoning, frequently deals with logical statements that can be conditionals or universal affirmative statements, expressing relations of necessity and sufficiency. In logic, a necessary condition is something that must be true for another thing to be true, while a sufficient condition is one where its truth guarantees the truth of another.
A common way to challenge a conditional or universal affirmative statement is by providing a counterexample to demonstrate that the necessary or sufficient conditions do not hold. For instance, the modus ponens form of argument shows how sufficiency works in logic: if 'X' is sufficient for 'Y', and 'X' is true, then 'Y' must also be true. Conversely, the modus tollens form illustrates necessity: if 'Y' is necessary for 'X', and 'Y' is not true, then 'X' cannot be true either.
Logical analysis also includes the evaluation of arguments for their logical validity, apart from the truth of their premises. Philosophers and logicians look at logical inference and the forms of arguments like disjunctive syllogism, affirming the consequent, and denying the antecedent, to assess the quality of reasoning. The goal is to avoid fallacies that might lead to false conclusions regardless of the truth of the premises.