Logical Reasoning

PT112 · S4 · Q16 Sales manager: The highest priority

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Sales manager: The highest priority should be given to the needs of the sales department, because without successful sales the company as a whole would fail.

Sales manager's argument

The sales department should get the highest priority because successful sales are necessary for the company's success.

Shipping manager's response

Several other departments are also necessary for the company to succeed. But you can't give the highest priority to all of them — that's impossible.

Evaluate

The sales manager's implicit principle: if a department is necessary to the company's success, it deserves the highest priority. The shipping manager doesn't deny that sales is important — instead, the response shows that sales manager's principle, applied consistently, would absurdly require giving "highest priority" to several departments at once. By definition, only one thing can be the "highest" priority — so the principle leads to an impossible conclusion.

Goal

Find an answer that describes the response as exposing an absurd consequence of the sales manager's underlying principle.

16.

The shipping manager criticizes the sales manager's argument by pointing out

that the sales department taken
Bad Description
The shipping manager doesn't say sales isn't critical. The response actually grants that sales is necessary — it just notes that other departments are also necessary. The response targets the leap from necessity to "highest priority," not the necessity claim itself.
27% picked this
the ambiguity of the term
Bad Description
The shipping manager doesn't accuse the sales manager of using "highest priority" ambiguously. The response just notes that giving highest priority to multiple things is impossible — accepting the term's meaning and showing the principle yields an absurd result. There's no ambiguity claim.
5% picked this
that departments other than sales
Bad Description
The shipping manager doesn't rank other departments as more vital than sales — only as also vital. The point isn't which department is most important; it's that the sales manager's reasoning would require top priority for several departments at once, which is impossible.
2% picked this
Correct
an absurd consequence of its
Why this is right
This nails the move. The sales manager's argument has an implicit assumption: a department's necessity earns it the highest priority. The shipping manager exposes that this principle, applied to all the departments that are necessary, would require giving the highest priority to several departments — which is impossible. That's the absurd consequence the response highlights. Classic reductio ad absurdum: take the opponent's premise, run it through, and show it leads somewhere it can't go.
Skill tested: Method · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
65% picked this
that the sales manager makes
Bad Description
The sales manager isn't generalizing from an atypical case — there's no specific example being extended. The sales manager is making a general principled argument (sales is necessary, therefore sales should get top priority). And the shipping manager isn't accusing the sales manager of overgeneralizing from a one-off; the response targets the principle itself by showing it can't apply consistently.
1% picked this

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