Logical Reasoning

PT10 · S1 · Q25 Large inequalities in wealth

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Large inequalities in wealth always threaten the viability of true democracy, since wealth is the basis of political power, and true democracy depends on the equal distribution of political power among all citizens.

Conclusion

Large inequalities in wealth always threaten the viability of true democracy.

Evidence (since / and)

True democracy depends on equal disitribution of political power, and wealth is the basis of political power.

Evaluate

This seems like a pretty reasonable argument. The premises seem to combine a couple rules that come together to give us the conclusion. There are repeating symbols (wealth / political power / true democracy), suggesting that this could be a good contender for diagramming.

The conversational essence is saying, .

Symbolically,

X depends on equal Y. Z is the basis of Y. ----------------------- So, variations in Z will threaten X.

Goal

Let's be picky on a first pass and try to match the essence and the structure, and then if we need to we'll get more flexible on the second pass.

25.

The reasoning in which one of the following arguments most closely parallels the reasoning in the argument above?

  1. Consumer culture and an emphasis

    Bad Evidence Match

    This doesn't really have two premises. It's saying, "This combo is bad, because this combo is uncontrollable and leads to irrational excess." There's no rule like "X depends on equal Y".

    5% picked this

  2. If Sara went to the

    Weak Conclusion Match

    This conclusion has a couple new concepts, "every time her pocket was full" and "not enough money to cover living expenses". The two premises, "She loves books and they're very expensive" would combine to allow us to say "if she had a lot of money, she would probably spend a lot of money on books". But we don't need to think that she'd spend so much that she wouldn't cover her living expenses. There's a huge gap between "I love X" and "I will spend so much money on X that I won't be able to pay my bills". There wasn't a huge gap when we combined "wealth = power" and "true democracy depends on equal power" to get "unequal wealth will undermine democracy".

    7% picked this

  3. It is very difficult to

    Bad Evidence Match

    The two premises here make a distinction between two things. The two premises in the original argument are connecting wealth and democracy through the overlapping concept of political power.

    7% picked this

  4. Honesty is important in maintaining

    Bad Evidence Match Bad Conclusion Match

    The conclusion is a wishy-washy "difficult to predict", whereas the original conclusion was "X always threatens Y". The two premises here say that the same thing (honesty) has a positive and a negative, but the two premises in the original argument were not saying that political power had both a negative and a positive aspect.

    4% picked this

  5. Correct

    Repeated encroachments on one’s leisure

    Why this is right

    This one basically has all the ingredients we were looking for: X depends on equal Y. Z is the basis of Y. ----------------------- So, variations in Z will threaten X. Health depends on regular moderate exercise. Leisure time is required for regular exercise. --------------------- So, a scarcity a leisure time will threaten health. This one feels a bit different in that both premises read more like conditionals, whereas the premise "wealth is the basis of political power" reads more like a Volume Dial type claim (the more wealth, the more power). But the two premises connect leisure and health via an overlapping idea, "regular exercise" to get us to our conclusion, just as in the original argument the two premises connected wealth and democracy via the overlapping idea of "political power" to get to the conclusion.

    Skill tested: Parallel · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    77% picked this

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