Logical Reasoning

PT120 · S3 · Q6 Citizen: The primary factor determining

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Citizen: The primary factor determining a dog’s disposition is not its breed, but its home environment.

Conclusion (As a result)

Breed-specific legislation could never effectively protect the public from vicious dogs.

Intermediate Conclusion

A dog's disposition is determined mainly by its home environment, not its breed.

Evidence

A bad owner can undo generations of careful breeding.

Legislation aimed at specific breeds would not address the effects of how humans raise and train dogs.

Evaluate

When we read Main Conclusion / Role, we are listening actively for upside-down arguments (80% of the time the main conclusion comes earlier than its evidence).

So we may have correctly suspected that the First Sentence was a conclusion. It was indeed supported by the second sentence.

But we can also see from "As a result", that the third sentence supports the fourth.

(The fifth sentence is a weird bonus idea tacked on by Moreover, but not supported by anything in particular).

Since 3rd supports 4th, we know that 4th is also a conclusion.

So when it comes to our two conclusions (the 1st and 4th sentences), which one is supporting the other?

It makes more sense to say

than to say, .

Goal

So we know that the 4th sentence is our main conclusion, supported by the first three sentences.

Look for a restatement of "breed-specific legislation could never effectively protect the public."

6.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion drawn by the citizen?

  1. Correct

    The public would not be

    Why this is right

    This is a great match for the 4th sentence. We know this idea is supported by the first three sentences.

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

    76% picked this

  2. A good home environment is

    Premise

    This could probably be called a conclusion, but not the main one. It is seemingly supported by the 2nd sentence, but the whole point of saying that home environment is more important than breed is to support the idea that "breed-specific laws can't protect us from bad owners".

    12% picked this

  3. The home environment of dogs

    Premise

    This paraphrases the third sentence, that breed legislation would not address human behavior in raising dogs. We're looking to match the 4th sentence.

    6% picked this

  4. Irresponsible dog owners are capable

    Premise

    This basically matches the second sentence. We're looking to match the fourth.

    2% picked this

  5. The vicious-dog laws that are

    Unsupported

    This does not match any claim made. We're looking to match the 4th sentence. The citizen says breed-specific legislation fails to address human behavior, and separately calls the current laws "perfectly adequate." Nothing says the current laws ignore human behavior. If anything, since the author thinks that how dogs are raised/trained is what matters and also thinks the current laws are adequate, our author would probably be thinking that the current laws DO address raising/training. But we shouldn't be thinking this hard. We're only asking ourselves whether (E) sounds like a restatement of the 4th sentence.

    4% picked this

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