Logical Reasoning

PT11 · S2 · Q7 Every adult male woolly monkey

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Every adult male woolly monkey is larger than even the largest female woolly monkey.

Statements

Conditional (every) Adult male woolly monkey → larger than the largest female

Conditional (any) Adult male in a colony → dominates any female

Evaluate

When we get Conditionals on Must Be True, we're usually being tested on our ability to do one or more of these three things: 1) contrapose a rule 2) chain rules together 3) see that a fact triggers a rule

Do these two rules chain together? No, they have a trigger in common. We could sort of consolidate them and say,

Goal

Let's look for anything we can prove. Maybe it'll be a Trait Overlap inference like, "some larger things are dominant".

7.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following must on the basis of them be true of woolly monkeys in colonies?

  1. Size is the primary determinant

    Too Speculative

    Adult males are both larger and dominant, but the statements never connect the two. Size could be irrelevant to dominance, with age or something else doing the work. On Most Supported, we sometimes see correct answers speculate a causal connection between two differences, but we can't prove in a must be true sense that adult males dominate because they're larger.

    8% picked this

  2. Some large adolescent male woolly

    Unsupported

    Both rules are about adult males. Adolescent males are never mentioned, so nothing can be concluded about whether they dominate anyone, whatever their size. Like (A), this would be speculating that adult males dominate because they're large, which we were never told.

    6% picked this

  3. If a male woolly monkey

    Unsupported Relationship

    This is trying to create a conditional rule out of the two outcomes: larger and dominate. This makes size the trigger for dominance. The statements never do that. A non-adult male could be larger than a particular female without any rule saying he dominates her, because the dominance rule only covers adults.

    18% picked this

  4. Correct

    If a female woolly monkey

    Why this is right

    Any adult male dominates any female. So a male who is dominated by a female cannot be an adult male, because an adult male would dominate her. That's the contrapositive of the dominance rule: "if female dominates male, then not an adult male."

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

    69% picked this

  5. An adult male woolly monkey

    Contradicted

    The rule says an adult male dominates "any female," with no age restriction on the female.

    0% picked this

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