Logical Reasoning

PT113 · S2 · Q25 In a car accident, air bags

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In a car accident, air bags greatly reduce the risk of serious injury.

Conclusion (Thus)

Cars with air bags are no safer than cars without air bags.

Evidence

Stats show that cars without air bags are less likely to be involved in accidents than are cars with air bags.

Evaluate

This conclusion is what we might call Anti-Causal. Most of us may think that air bags make a car safer (because they can prevent you from dying in a front-end collision, where your head is thrown towards the steering wheel).

The author is trying to rain on that parade: sorry, cars with air bags aren't safer.

Really? Why not.

Because cars with air bags are more likely to be involved in accidents.

Okay, well whether or not you're involved in an accident isn't really our concern. Air bags aren't designed to prevent us from getting into accidents. They're designed to make any accidents we get into less catastrophic to our bodies.

We could potentially argue that "likelihood of getting into an accident" has nothing to do with how air bags are meant to make you safer.

The author might be thinking that . We could offer an alternate explanation for the asymmetry and say,

Goal

Look for an answer complaining that we don't measure the safety boost of air bags in terms of "avoiding accidents" but rather in terms of .

Or look for an answer supplying an alternate explanation (an excuse) for the statistic that makes air bags look bad, like, .

Or maybe they will say that this author is guilty of a bit of a Self-Contradiction, since her first claim seems to undermine her conclusion that "cars with air bags are no safer".

25.

The argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it

  1. assumes, without providing justification, that

    Too Strong: any / will probably

    The author is only thinking that cars with air bags have a higher risk than do cars without. The risk could be 11% vs. 8%. This answer is saying the author must be assuming that over 50% of cars with air bags will eventually be involved in an accident.

    5% picked this

  2. denies the possibility that cars

    Not an Objection

    Since this answer stars with fails to consider / ignores the possibility, we can ask ourselves whether it would, if true, be a weakening idea. But this idea would strengthen. The author is arguing that cars without air bags are at least as safe as cars with air bags, and saying "cars without air bags have other safety features that boost their safety as much as an air bag boosts the safety of a car it's in".

    22% picked this

  3. overlooks the possibility that some

    Not an Objection

    Again, because of overlooks the possibility, we can ask, "Would this weaken?" But saying "at least one accident has involved a car with air bags and a car without air bags" does absolute nothing to attack this author. The author was never assuming that accidents transpire exclusively between two cars with air bags or between two cars without air bags.

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    assumes, without providing justification, that

    Why this is right

    The author acknowledges in her first sentence that air bags greatly reduce the risk of serious injury. Then she presents a statistic that makes it seem like driving a car with an air bag makes you more likely to be involved in an accident. So in one sense, air bags makes you safer (reduced risk of serious injury). In one sense, in the author's mind, air bags make you less safe (higher likelihood of being in an accident). For the author to conclude that overall cars with air bags are no safer than cars without, she has to assume that extra safety air bags provide is annulled (offset, if not eclipsed) by the extra risk air bags present. That's what this answer is expressing. The author was Weighing Tradeoffs and needs to assume that the "downside" of air bags (greater risk of being involved in accident) weighs as least as heavily as the "upside" (reduced risk of serious injury). If we negated this answer, it would be saying that the risk of getting into an accident weighs less heavily than does the risk of serious injury in an accident. That negation would allow someone to argue that cars with air bags are safer overall. Since the negation would badly weaken, we can tell that this idea is an assumption the author is making.

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

    66% picked this

  5. takes for granted that all

    Too Strong: all

    Because this answer begins with takes for granted / presumes / assumes, we ask ourselves whether the author needed to assume this idea. The author doesn't need to believe the crazy-extreme position that airbags deploy in 100% of accidents. If we negated this and said, "Hey, author -- airbags only deploy in 99% of accidents", that wouldn't hurt her argument in the slightest.

    3% picked this

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