Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S2 · Q18 Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula

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Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula portrayed vampires—the “undead” who roam at night to suck the blood of living people—as able to turn into bats.

Conclusion

This assumption is false. rephrase: A vampire's being able to turn into a bat is not an essential part of vampire myths. rephrase of the rephrase: it's possible to have a vampire myth where the vampire isn't able to turn into a bat.

Evidence (for)

Vampire myths existed in Europe long before Bram Stoker's book.

Evaluate

The most challenging technical part of this is undressing the conclusion. "This assumption is false" contains a pronoun, so we need to search back for what assumption was just said, and then invert the truth value.

If they were assuming "Coke is tasty" then this author is concluding "Coke is not tasty".

They were assuming "X is an essential part of Y", so this author is concluding that "X is not an essential part of Y". It's very easy to prove that: you only need one example in which Y was true but X was not.

So all this author needs to present as evidence in order to win her case that is one example in which there's a vampire myth but the vampire was not able to turn into a bat.

Does she present an example of that?

No, she just says that vampire myths existed before Stoker's book.

Goal

She must be assuming that .

18.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

  1. At least one of the

    Out of Scope: nocturnal

    The author's argument doesn't care whether vampires are always portrayed as strictly nocturnal or not. He cares about whether vampires are always portrayed as being able to turn into a bat.

    2% picked this

  2. Vampire myths in Central and

    Out of Scope: Central / South America

    The author doesn't need to assume anything about Central and South America. If we negated this answer and said, "The vampire myths in Central and South America do not portray vampires as able to turn into bats", that would actually prove his conclusion true! The correct answer, when negated, would weaken the argument.

    1% picked this

  3. Vampire myths did not exist

    Too Strong: only in Europe

    The author doesn't need to assume the strong idea that vampire myths only existed in Europe prior to Stoker's book. If we negate this and say that vampire myths also existed outside Europe prior to Stoker's book, that wouldn't affect the argument at all. The author is only trying to prove that there is at least one vampire myth, from anywhere, in which the vampire is not able to turn into a bat.

    8% picked this

  4. Correct

    At least one of the

    Why this is right

    The author is trying to prove that "being able to turn into a bat" is not an essential part of vampire myths, so he needs to support that by showing us that there is at least one vampire myth in which the vampire is not able to turn into a bat. His only premise (signified by "for") is that vampire myths existed in Europe prior to Stoker's book. He must, therefore, be assuming that in at least one of these vampire myths, the vampire was not able to turn into a bat. If we negated this, the "at least one" would become "none", and we would have a double-negative: none of the pre-Stoker vampire myths did not portray vampires as being able to turn into bats. If I say "none of my friends did not have ice cream", I'm saying "all of my friends had some ice cream". Here, we'd be getting "all of the pre-Stoker vampire myths did portray vampires as being able to turn into bats". That would definitely weaken the author, since he would then have no relevant premise at all with which to support his conclusion.

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

    82% picked this

  5. At the time he wrote

    Out of Scope: Stoker's familiarity

    The argument doesn't care whether Stoker knew of any other vampire myths, or whether he just created his vampire myth purely from his own imagination (not knowing that other vampire myths even existed). Neither one has any impact on our conversation, which is about whether there's ever been a vampire myth in which the vampire was not able to turn into a bat.

    7% picked this

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