Logical Reasoning

PT112 · S3 · Q22 The retail price of decaffeinated

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The retail price of decaffeinated coffee is considerably higher than that of regular coffee.

Conclusion (Therefore)

The price difference cannot be accounted for by the greater cost of providing decaffeinated coffee to the consumer.

Evidence

The process by which the coffee beans are decaffeinated is fairly simple and not very costly.

Evaluate

The author's conclusion is Anti-Causal, because it's saying . There's an implied causal mystery: Why is the retail price of decaff way higher than that of regular coffee?

The author says, . So she's making a Part to Whole move.

If we wanted to posit a missing link, we would say something like,

We could challenge this conclusion by pointing to other potential areas of expense involved in providing decaff to the consumer: maybe the beans that are used are way more expensive to procure, maybe decaff is way more expensive to store or to ship.

Goal

Look for an answer stating the move from .

But more likely an answer will rule out an objection, so the correct answer might have the signature "ruling-out not" that we see a ton in correct answers for Necessary Assumption.

22.

The argument relies on assuming which one of the following?

  1. Processing regular coffee costs more

    Unsupported Comparison

    The author is only trying to argue that processing decaff is not much more than processing regular coffee. She doesn't have to assume that processing decaff is less than processing regular coffee. If processing regular costs the same as processing decaff, this argument will work just as well.

    6% picked this

  2. Price differences between products can

    Too Broad: generally

    This argument is specifically about what accounts for the higher price of decaff. The author doesn't need to assume anything about what affects price differences between different types of other products.

    14% picked this

  3. There is little competition among

    Out of Scope: competition

    Since the author doesn't think decaff is way more pricey because of the production costs, she might speculate that the real reason the price is way higher is because there isn't enough competition to deter companies from jacking up the price. But she might believe the real reason is something else. Or she might have no idea what the real reason is. If we negate this and say, "There is LOTS of competition between companies that process decaff", would that hurt the argument in any way? Would that allow us to argue that decaff has a higher retail price because it costs more to provide decaff to the consumer? No, not at all.

    1% picked this

  4. Retail coffee-sellers do not expect

    Weakens

    Since this has the lovable Necessary Assumption "not", we can negate it and see if it weakens. If we negated this answer, it would strengthen. The negation would be saying that retail sellers know that they can get away with charging consumers more for decaff. That would pretty much prove the author's argument correct -- the retail price of decaff is not because there's a greater cost to provide decaff to the consumer; it's because retailers know they can just charge more (and boost their profit margin).

    2% picked this

  5. Correct

    The beans used for producing

    Why this is right

    This also has the appealing "ruling out not", so it's ripe for negating. If we say, "Yo, author -- the beans they use for decaff do cost much more even before processing than the beans used for producing regular coffee", then we can argue that decaff coffee does cost way more to provide to the consumer, and thus that the price difference can be accounted fo by the greater cost of providing decaff. Again, the author's argument was a Part vs. Whole type of move. She thought that if the process of removing the caffeine wasn't adding a lost of cost, then the cost of providing decaff overall wouldn't be much more costly. In doing so, she failed to consider that there could be other facets of providing decaff to consumers that are much more expensive than providing regular coffee to consumers. She assumed that shipping decaff does not cost much more. She assumed that grinding and brewing decaff does not cost much more. And, as this answer is saying, she assumed that the beans themselves do not cost much more. Put another way, someone could have objected to the original argument by saying, "Decaff absolutely has a higher retail price because of its higher productions costs. Yes, the process of removing caffeine doesn't cost much, but you have to find special beans with tons of robust flavor so that when you remove the caffeine there's still a lot of rich coffee flavor. Those premium beans are very expensive."

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

    77% picked this

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