Logical Reasoning

PT109 · S1 · Q4 Juan: Unlike the ancient Olympic

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Juan: Unlike the ancient Olympic games on which they are based, the modern Olympics include professional as well as amateur athletes.

Conclusion (hence)

The presence of professional athletes violates the spirit of fairness essential to the games.

Intermediate Conclusion

It is unlikely that amateurs will ever offer a serious challenge to professionals in Olympic events where they compete against each other.

Evidence (since)

Amateurs rarely have the financial or material resources available to professionals.

The ancient Olympics did not include professional athletes.

Goal

We don't really need to worry about Michiko's response. We just need a way to accept that amateurs rarely have the resources that professionals have, but argue that amateurs might still offer a serious challenge to professionals and thus it's still a fair competition.

Or we can argue that even though the amateurs won't offer a serious challenge to professionals competing in the same event, the presence of professionals doesn't violate the spirit of fairness.

4.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously undermines Juan's argument?

  1. In general, amateur athletes tend

    No Impact

    Saying that amateurs vastly outnumber professionals doesn't address the situation the author cares about: in events where amateurs compete against professionals, does the presence of the professionals mean that they're almost certain to win and thus it violates the spirt of fairness of the games. Here, we'd be counterarguing that the presence of professional athletes in some events doesn't violate the spirit of fairness, because overall there are more amateurs than professionals competing. That's a very weak counterargument.

    3% picked this

  2. In certain events in the

    No Impact

    This is similar to (A), in that it seems to be saying, "It's okay if the professional dominate the events that they're in; overall, amateurs still have an advantage / or a fair shot". (A) was saying, "It's okay for professionals to dominate some events, because there are more amateur participants overall. (B) is saying, "It's okay for professionals to dominate some events, because amateurs dominate some of the other events". Both of these are dodging the author's main issue: there might be some events where amateurs dominate because only amateurs compete. But the author wants to know, "in an event where a professional would be competing against amateurs, would the professional dominate, and if so would that be fair?"

    10% picked this

  3. The concept of “amateur” and

    Strengthens, if antyhing

    This seems to reinforce what the author was saying. He mentioned that the ancient Olympic games had no "professional" athletes competing. That's because there wasn't an occupation known as professional athlete back then, so naturally they wouldn't understand what we meant by amateur vs. professional. To them all athletes are just people. This answer sounds more like something that would help the author argue that this phenomenon of mixing professionals with amateurs goes against the spirt of the original games.

    5% picked this

  4. Correct

    In the modern Olympics there

    Why this is right

    This basically attacks the link from the Premise to the Intermediate Conclusion. It's saying, "Just because amateurs rarely have the financial or material resources available to professionals, that doesn't mean that pros will dominate those events. After all, in the modern Olympics there's been no noticeable correlation between financial/material resources and the eventual performance of the athletes." So pros and amateurs are fairly matched, since the extra resources available to the pros don't guarantee or even seem to promote better performance.

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

    81% picked this

  5. Many amateur athletes who take

    Strengthens

    This affirms the resource disparity between amateurs and pros. Pros often have financial or material resources, whereas amateurs don't get financial or material support from the government of the country sending them to the Olympics.

    1% picked this

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