Logical Reasoning

PT114 · S2 · Q9 During the three months before

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During the three months before and the three months after a major earthquake in California, students at a college there happened to be keeping a record of their dreams.

Conclusion (So / it is clear)

Experiencing an earthquake can cause people to dream about earthquakes.

Evidence

There's a study where students in California and students in Ontario kept records of their dreams for six months.

Almost none of the students in Ontario reported dreaming about quakes. None of them had ever experienced an earthquake.

The California group experienced an earthquake 3 months into the study, and half of that group reported dreaming about earthquakes in the final three months of the study.

Evaluate

Since the author is presenting the data from an experiment/study and then concluding something causal, we can use our Explain Curious Fact framework.

Curious Fact ... How come half the Cali students recorded a dream about earthquakes in the latter 3 months of the study?

Author's Explanation ... Those students experienced an earthquake around the 3 month of the study, and that experienced caused the subsequent dreams about quakes.

The two pressure points we care about are, 1. Alternate Explanations for the curious fact 2. the plausibility of the Author's Explanation

Although Weaken / Flaw / Evaluate / Nec Assump are all more likely to test alternate explanations, Strengthen is more likely to test plausibility of author.

The most common form to a plausibility-strengthener is something that takes the form of No Cause, No Effect.

Since the author thinks that experiencing the earthquake caused the earthquake dreams, we could strengthen with an answer like,

Goal

Let's look for something improving the plausibility that the earthquake, not something else, caused these dreams.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

Correct
Before the California earthquake, no
Why this is right
This answer sort of serves both functions (it doesn't need to serve both to be a good answer). A potential alternate explanation for why the California kids had earthquake dreams is that earthquakes are a huge part of the cultural landscape in California. Even if you've never directly experience one, you see people buying earthquake kits, you hear people tell stories about quakes, you ride the Earthquake ride at Universal Studios. So it's possible that the real cause of earthquake dreams is "living in California" vs. "living in Ontario". But this answer rules out that possibility, because the California kids didn't have a higher rate of earthquake dreams until they actually experienced the earthquake! We can also just understand this answer as a version of the classic No Cause, No Effect plausibility strengthener. The author thought that experiencing an earthquake caused the higher rate of earthquake dreams among the Cali students. This answer corroborates that by saying, "Prior to the earthquake (when the Cali students hadn't yet experienced an earthquake), they didn't have a higher rate of dreaming".
Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
82% picked this
The students in California were
No Impact
This neither rules out an alternate explanation for why the Cali kids had more earthquake dreams, nor does it make it more plausible that experiencing an earthquake is what caused half the Cali kids to have earthquake dreams.
1% picked this
Before they started keeping records
Weak Impact
Many doesn't have a strict definition, but we can use "at least 5". Does it help the plausibility of the author's case to say that at least 5 of these Cali students had previously experienced an earthquake? It doesn't really. It wouldn't make any difference if none of the Cali kids had ever experienced a prior earthquake. Since they all experienced one 3 months into the study and then half of them had earthquake dreams after that, the author already has a basis for arguing that experiencing the quake caused the earthquake dream. We'd be interested in knowing whether those students who had experienced an earthquake prior to the study also had earthquake dreams in the months following that earthquake.
8% picked this
The students in Ontario reported
No Impact: quantity of dreams
The raw number of dreams a student has doesn't make any difference to this conversation. If a student were thinking, "Couldn't an alternate explanation for why the Cali students had more earthquake dreams be that they just have more dreams, period? (So they have more chances for a dream to be about earthquakes)." If so, then this answer would be ruling out that alternate explanation. The problem with that logic is that it would be a very weak alternate explanation to argue that the Cali students had more earthquake dreams because they had a higher number of dreams. After all, there's no common sense idea that says, "if X has more dreams than Y does, then X is more likely to have dreams about earthquakes than Y is."
1% picked this
The students in Ontario who
No Impact
One might look at this answer and think, "Is this saying that hearing about the California earthquake caused these Ontario students to have earthquake dreams"? So does that strengthen the author's claim that earthquakes cause earthquake dreams? No, not only would that be a huge leap for us to assume that the Ontario students' few earthquake dreams were in relation to the California quake, but the conclusion is also specifically about experiencing an earthquake. So hearing about an earthquake wouldn't make any difference to the conversation.
7% picked this

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