Logical Reasoning

PT119 · S4 · Q18 Bookstore owner: Consumers should buy

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Bookstore owner: Consumers should buy books only from an independent bookstore, not from a bookstore that belongs to a bookstore chain.

Conclusion (should = opinion)

Consumers should buy books only from an independent bookstore, not a big-chain store.

Intermediate Conclusion (so)

Big-chain stores tend to reduce the variety of books available to consumers.

Evidence (because)

Big-chain stores threaten the existence of indie stores, and indie stores tend to carry a much wider variety of books than a big-chain store does.

Evaluate

The conclusion-language we're trying to support is "should", a value judgment. There aren't any value judgments in the premises, so the correct answer needs to link what we're talking about in the premises to a value judgment.

Why's this author trying to get us to only buy our books from indie bookstores?

It all boils down to "the variety of books available to consumers". That's what indies are better at. And if we shop at big-chain stores, the indies will go out of business and we'll lose that variety that indie shops provide.

Goal

Look for an answer attaching a value judgment to those considerations: / .

18.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the bookstore owner's argumentation?

  1. Chain bookstores should not force

    Unrelated to Goal

    We need a rule about what consumers should / shouldn't do, because that's what our conclusion is talking about. This is a rule about what chain bookstores should / shouldn't do.

    5% picked this

  2. Correct

    Consumers should buy books from

    Why this is right

    This combines the value judgment "should" and the relevant ideas "consumers only buying from certain places" from the conclusion with the primary concern of the evidence: the variety of books available to consumers. As a rule, it would look like this: If a bookstore's existence consumers tends to reduce the variety ? should not buy of books available to consumers books there The trigger of this applies to big-chain stores, because the evidence told us that they tend to reduce the variety of books available to consumers. So according to this rule, consumers should not buy from big-chain stores, which supports our conclusion.

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

    80% picked this

  3. The best interest of the

    Bad Conclusion Match

    According to this rule, if consumers buy from big-chain stores, then the best interest of the bookselling business is not served. Okay, are we concerned about serving the best interests of the bookselling business? In order for this to support the conclusion, we'd have to imagine our own rule that says "Consumers should not shop in any way that fails serve the best interest of the bookselling business". With (B), we don't have to add any connective tissue to make it work. It provides a rule that lets us derive the actual language of the conclusion.

    10% picked this

  4. Consumers should not make purchases

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: deliberately Bad Trigger Match This has the right conclusion language, "consumers should not buy from X". But it's trigger doesn't clearly apply to big-chain stores. In order for us to apply this rule to big-chain and derive that consumers should not make purchases from big-chain, we would need to know that big-chain stores "deliberately force competing bookstores out of business". We don't know that. The evidence told us that big-chain stores threaten the existence of competing bookstores, but that's not the same as "deliberately force them out of business".

    4% picked this

  5. If consumers have no access

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This actually contradicts the conclusion, which is saying that consumers should only buy from indies, thus never from big-chain.

    0% picked this

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