Logical Reasoning

PT119 · S2 · Q17 Legislator: The recently released crime

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Legislator: The recently released crime statistics clearly show that the new laws requiring stiffer punishments for violators have reduced the crime rate.

Conclusion

The statistics don't provide strong evidence that the new laws caused the drop in crime.

Evidence

Many comparable areas where they don't have the new laws also have a drop in crime.

Evaluate

The analyst responds with a classic Effect, No Cause weakener. These undermine the plausibility of someone's causal story by showing that the effect is occurring even when the supposed causal difference-maker is absent. It suggests that there must be some alternate explanation, although it gives no guidance as to what that alternate explanation is.

It leaves us thinking,

Goal

We would expect the answer to probably use the language we use with Causal Arguments – the analyst is suggesting there must be an alternative explanation for the phenomenon by showing that the phenomenon is occurring even in the absence of the causal factor that the legislator is claiming is making the difference.

17.

Which one of the following most accurately describes the strategy used by the analyst to call into question the legislator's argument?

  1. pointing out that the legislator

    Bad Premise Match

    The analyst doesn't bring up anything about the reliability of the statistics. If anything, given that she says “the stats are welcome news”, she seems to implicitly accept / trust the statistics.

    6% picked this

  2. arguing that the legislator has

    Bad Premise Match

    The does conclude that the legislator has unreasonably concluded one event caused another (“hey – that's not strong evidence that the new laws caused the drop in crime”). But the analyst isn't suggesting that something caused the new laws and caused the drop in crime. She's suggesting that something else, besides the new laws, must be causing the widespread drop in crime.

    20% picked this

  3. objecting that the statistics on

    Bad Premise Match

    The analyst doesn't say anything about the time period being too short. She's saying, “over the same time period, areas that didn't have X showed just as much Y as areas that did have X. So it doesn't look like X is the difference-maker that's causing Y.”

    1% picked this

  4. claiming that the legislator has

    Bad Premise Match

    The analyst doesn't say anything that matches up with this Ad Hominem sounding answer. She didn't accuse the legislator of making this argument out of self-interest rather than any true concern for the truth.

    0% picked this

  5. Correct

    implying that the legislator has

    Why this is right

    The premise is certainly pointing out that alleged effect (drop in crime) has occurred in the absence of the alleged cause (new laws/legislation). The other part of this answer is a little weird: “implying that the legislator hasn't considered this”. It's ultimately safer than any other answer, but because it's saying “implying”, we don't need to even see this happen explicitly in the analyst's paragraph. If you say, “Your premise isn't strong evidence for your conclusion, because OBJECTION idea”, then you're implicitly saying, “You must have failed to consider OBJECTION idea, cuz otherwise you'd see how unpersuasive your argument is.” On Flaw questions, many of the answer choices do this same thing: The argument is flawed because the legislator A) fails to consider [this objection idea]

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

    74% picked this

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