Logical Reasoning

PT116 · S2 · Q9 Activist: As electronic monitoring of employees

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Activist: As electronic monitoring of employees grows more commonplace and invasive, we hear more and more attempted justifications of this practice by employers.

Conclusion

The justifications employers offer for increasing surveillance of employees do not justify the increased surveillance.

Evidence

The justifications are obviously self-serving.

Evaluation

I don't know, those seemed like potentially substantive reasons the employers offered. Employees would be more honest if they knew a video tape were documenting everything that happened. They might be more efficient because there would be tape of them slacking, otherwise. They might be more polite because there would be recordings of them being rude, otherwise.

Yes, having more efficient, honest, and polite employees would benefit the employers, so those explanations are self-serving, but they might also be valid. If we want to fight the move to increase surveillance, we should be acknowledging the positives it could bring but then arguing that those are outweighed by some negative repercussions.

We can't just say,

Goal

This is committing the famous flaw Ad Hominem, but answer choices describing Ad Hominem normally sound like , or

9.

A questionable technique used in the activist's argument is to

  1. attack an argument different from

    Bad Evidence Match

    The author doesn't attack a different argument; she just dismisses the one that employers are making by saying that it's a self-serving argument. (Attacking a different argument goes by the nicknames Straw Man or Irrelevant Response)

    3% picked this

  2. presume that employees are never

    Too Strong: never

    Our author doesn't insinuate that no employee has ever been dishonest, inefficient, or rude. That's an absurdly crazy claim to believe, and we can't point to where our author sounds that crazy.

    4% picked this

  3. insist that modern business practices

    Unsupported Comparison

    Nothing in the argument relates to "past moral standards" vs. "modern moral standards"

    1% picked this

  4. Correct

    attack employers’ motives instead of

    Why this is right

    "Ad hominem" means attacking the person rather than the argument. Our author did not address whether surveilling employees would indeed make them more polite, efficient, or honest. She only brought up the motives ("self-serving") of the employers and used that to reject their argument

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

    89% picked this

  5. make a generalization based on

    Bad Conclusion Match Bad Evidence Match

    The conclusion does not make a generalization. It's a specific rejection of the justification these employers were making. This answer choice describes the famous flaw Sampling. If this answer had been committing a Sampling flaw, it would have needed to make a move from "because it's true here, it's true in other cases like this". "Since these justification are self-serving, any reason an employer gives for increased surveillance must be self-serving." Instead it said, "Because these explanations are self-serving, these explanations should be rejected."

    3% picked this

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