Logical Reasoning

PT119 · S4 · Q25 Unquestionably, inventors of useful devices

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Unquestionably, inventors of useful devices deserve credit for their ingenuity, but the engineers who help develop an invention get too little recognition.

Main Conclusion (Therefore)

Engineers also deserve credit for their contribution.

Evidence

More often than not, engineers must translate an inventor's insight into something workable and useful.

Evaluate

Whenever we read the argument on Main Conclusion or Role, we remind ourselves that about 85-90% of the time, the conclusion will be earlier than the evidence, either in the first sentence or as part of some Pivot/Rebuttal claim.

This first sentence contains an author opinion and a pivot, so it's doubly suggesting to us, "Consider me as the conclusion!"

The first claim is prefaced by "unquestionably", which is a word authors use to mean .

The second claim uses the opinion indicator, "too little recognition". Does the rest of the paragraph try to convince us that engineers are getting too little recognition? Kind of. It convinces us that they deserve some recognition, but it doesn't get into any sort of commentary about how much recognition they currently get. We would sort of need to hear in order to support that they currently get too little recognition.

The final claim uses a Conclusion indicator "therefore", which means the last sentence is definitely a conclusion. Ultimately, we don't need to worry about whether to call "too little recognition" the main conclusion and "deserve credit" the intermediate, or whether to just call "deserve credit" the main conclusion, because we're being asked about an opposing idea, so it's unlikely that we will even be grilled on which of those two claims is the main conclusion.

Goal

We're being asked about a claim that was neither Conclusion nor Support.

The remaining two choices are Opposing or Neutral. Since our claim is prefaced by "although", we know it forms a contrast with the 2nd half of that sentence.

The 2nd half is the author's main premise, so the "Although" half forms a contrast with a premise. Thus, we can expect an answer that feels somewhat like Opposing.

However, this opposing idea isn't someone else's. It's our author's opposing idea, which means it's a concession / a qualification / a caveat.

Here, the author seems to just be acknowledging that in some cases there is no engineer (in which case his conclusion would be moot).

25.

The claim that inventors sometimes serve as their own engineers plays which one of the following roles in the argument?

  1. It separates the practical and

    Wrong Role: practical vs. theoretical

    All this claim does it separate inventions into two categories: "the same person both invented it and did the engineering" vs. "one person invented it and another person did the engineering".

    2% picked this

  2. Correct

    It indicates that the problem

    Why this is right

    The Although claim was "qualifying the author's conclusion" (i.e. narrowing the scope of the author's conclusion). The author is saying that engineers who help develop an invention don't get enough recognition, because it's the inventor who gets all the glory. But then the author realizes, "Wait a sec -- sometimes the inventor and the engineer are the same person, so in those instances, the engineer gets enough credit (because people give them credit as the inventor)." Thus, she qualifies her argument by saying "Although in some instances this criticism is irrelevant, most of the time there is a separate person doing the important engineering work and they also deserve credit."

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

    75% picked this

  3. It supports an earlier statement

    Opposite

    We were looking for Opposing, not Supporting. We know the claim we're being asked about isn't a conclusion or a supporting premise. It's a concession / caveat / qualification that carves out an exception to what is at issue in the argument.

    10% picked this

  4. It concedes that a distinction

    Out of Scope: unclear distinction

    This is meant to be attractive because this claim we're asked about is a concession. But the author is conceding that her claim that "engineers get too little recognition" isn't always the case (if the inventor and the engineer are one and the same person). The argument is making a distinction between the inventor and engineer, but the author is never saying that the distinction between those two roles is unclear. The inventor has an ingenious idea, and the engineer translate's the inventor's insight into something workable and useful. The author is just showing she is aware that sometimes these two distinct roles are performed by the same person.

    11% picked this

  5. It introduces an alternative solution

    Out of Scope: alternative solution

    The problem is that engineers get too little recognition, and the solution is that engineers should also get credit for their contribution to an invention. There isn't any alternative solution in the paragraph.

    2% picked this

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