Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S3 · Q23 Editorial: This political party has

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Editorial: This political party has repeatedly expressed the view that increasing spending on education is a worthy goal.

Conclusion (So)

This party's policy is clearly inconsistent (i.e. they are contradicting themselves).

Evidence

On some occasions they've expressed the view that increasing spending on education is a worthy goal.

On other occasions, they've claimed that the government should not increase spending on education.

Evaluate

Is it really a contradiction to sometimes support increased spending on education and other times not to?

No, because the two situations might not be fair to compare.

Perhaps in the year 2010, schools were badly underfunded and so Party X supported increased funding for education.

And then in the year 2020, schools were operating with a huge budget surplus, so Party X opposed increased funding ("they already have enough funding, clearly!").

Or perhaps in the year 2010 there was a bill to increase spending on S.T.E.M. education, and Party X supported that, but in the year 2020 there was a bill to increase spending on racial sensitivity education and Party X opposed that.

Goal

In order for these two different occasions to be contradictory, the author has to assume that they're fair to compare. She has to assume that there wasn't a good reason why the Party switched from supporting increased spending in one case and opposed it in another.

23.

The argument in the editorial depends on assuming which one of the following?

  1. It is inconsistent for a

    Out of Scope: Vote Against

    This argument only discussed this political party expressing a view about increased spending and claiming something about spending. The argument doesn't deal with anyone voting against spending.

    23% picked this

  2. A consistent course of action

    Bad Conclusion Match

    Whenever we see a conditional answer choice on Necessary Assumption, we want to think about how the conditional would be diagrammed and consider whether the author made that reasoning move. If we contrapose this answer, this rule can help us prove that " a certain course of action in educational policy was not consistent". But we're trying to prove that a political party's policy was not consistent. The author never made a reasoning move that concluded that a certain course of action within educational policy was inconsistent.

    1% picked this

  3. Even if a goal is

    Out of Scope: Morally Good

    This argument doesn't have anything to do with morality. That concept was never discussed, so the author hasn't made any assumptions about it.

    1% picked this

  4. Correct

    A consistent political policy does

    Why this is right

    If we say, "A gentleman never tells", it's diagrammed Gentleman ? Never tells This answer is saying, "A consistent party never holds that an action with a worthy goal should not be performed", so it would look like, Consistent ? wouldn't hold action w/ worthy party goal shouldn't be performed Whenever we see a conditional answer choice on Necessary Assumption, we want to think about how the conditional would be diagrammed and consider whether the author made that reasoning move. Since the conclusion is "inconsistent", we would want to contrapose this and get: does hold an action not w/ worthy goal ? consistent shouldn't be performed party The political party expressed that "increasing spending on education is a worthy goal". And then later it said that the government shouldn't perform the action of increasing spending on education.

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

    69% picked this

  5. Members of one political party

    Too Strong: never

    The author didn't say anything that would commit her to this extreme idea that members of political parties never ever have conflicting views on the best approach to a political issue.

    6% picked this

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