Logical Reasoning

PT120 · S4 · Q5 Sickles found at one archaeological

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Sickles found at one archaeological site had scratched blades, but those found at a second site did not.

Curious Fact (Evidence)

How come the sickles found at site 1 had scratched blades, while the sickles at site 2 had unscratched blades?

Premise (Since)

If you use a sickle to harvest grain, it gets scratched.

Explanation (Conclusion)

So the the sickles at site 1 were used to harvest grain, but the sickles at site 2 weren't.

Evaluate

We can't fight the second half of this two-pronged conclusion. The author is correct to conclude that the sickles at the 2nd site weren't used to harvest grain.

After all, we were told that if a sickle was used to harvest grain, it always gets scratched, and the sickles at site 2 weren't scratched.

But we can fight the first half of the conclusion: we don't have to believe that the sickles at Site 1 were used to harvest grain.

We can say they got scratched some other way.

Goal

On all Explain Curious Fact arguments, the correct answer deals with 1. an Alternate Explanation for the curious fact or 2. the Plausibility of the Author's Explanation

Let's look for an Alternate Reason for why the sickles at site 1 were scratched, or let's look for an answer that lowers the Plausibility of the idea that sickles were being used to harvest grain at site 1.

5.

Which one of the following, if shown to be a realistic possibility, would undermine the argument?

  1. Some sickles that have not

    Too Weak

    Too Weak: some Out of Scope: sickles not found We should be immediately wary of this answer because it's one-data point worth of information: there is at least one sickle lurking at this site that doesn't have a scratched blade. Cool, so what? The author didn't need to believe that every sickle at site 1 was scratched. We know that all the ones we've found so far ARE scratched, and the author's hypothesis for why they're scratched is that those sickles (the ones we've found) were used to harvest grain. Since the conclusion only speaks for the sickles found at site 1, this answer about sickles not found is irrelevant.

    7% picked this

  2. Correct

    The scratches on the blades

    Why this is right

    This does what most correct Weaken answers do, on Explain Curious Fact -- it provides an alternate explanation for the curious fact. The answer doesn't tell us what Alternate Cause led to the scratches, but it assures us that there WAS an alternate cause. It wasn't scratched by harvesting grain.

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

    83% picked this

  3. Sickles at both sites had

    No Impact

    Since this provides an alternate explanation for the sickles, it might feel like we're possibly suggesting an Alternate Explanation for the scratches on the sickle blades. Maybe it wasn't harvesting grain, it was ritual uses? But if the ritual uses caused scratches, and since the ritual uses also happened at site 2, then the blades at site 2 would have also had scratches. Since we know both sites did the ritual uses, but only site 1 had scratched blades, it's not plausible for us to think that "maybe the blades at site 1 were scratched from the ritual uses, not the grain harvesting."

    3% picked this

  4. At the second site tools

    No Impact

    We can't argue with the fact that sickles were NOT used to harvest grain at site 2, so we really don't care what answer choices have to say about site 2. The only vulnerability for the argument is whether grain was harvested at site 1.

    7% picked this

  5. The sickles found at the

    Weaker Impact

    Since the author thinks that the sickle blades at site 1 were used to harvest grain but the ones at site 2 weren't, maybe it undermines the plausibility of that belief a little bit to say, "Are you sure? The blades at both sites were made by the same people." But that's a weak objection. The author can say, "Cool, I never said that sickles at the two sites were made by different people. I said they were used for different purposes." And the correct answer body slams the argument by saying, "Yo, those blades were not caused by harvesting grain."

    1% picked this

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