Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S2 · Q19 Vanwilligan: Some have argued that

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Vanwilligan: Some have argued that professional athletes receive unfairly high salaries.

Conclusion (thus)

The salaries professional athletes receive are fair.

Evidence

The salaries are determined by what someone else is willing to pay for their services. Owners are willing to pay extraordinary salaries because the athletes make enormous profits for those owners.

Evaluate

We're trying to prove that salaries are "fair". Did the argument provide a legal definition of "fair"? Nope. So we know the correct answer has to be structured like, if xyz --> then fair

What do we know about these salaries? - determined by what someone else is willing to pay - owners are willing to pay extraordinary salaries

Goal

We basically need an answer to take either of the things we heard about these salaries and tell us, "If that's true, then it's a fair salary". So we'll look for either of these:

if it's determined by then your what someone else → salary is is willing to pay for fair your services

if owners are willing then your to pay you an → salary is extraordinary salary fair

19.

Vanwilligan's conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?

  1. The fairest economic system for

    Unrelated to Goal: fairest system

    We need a rule that says, "If xyz, then fair" that we can apply to these athletes' salaries. This is a rule that you could apply to an economic system, in order to conclude that the economic system is / isn't the fairest. There's nothing in this rule about salaries.

    5% picked this

  2. If professional athletes were paid

    Unrelated to Goal

    If it's not a rule that says "if xyz, then fair", then it's totally useless to us. We need to combine our answer choice with the evidence in order to mathematically derive, "these salaries are fair". The evidence never mentions or defines "fair", so the answer choice will have to.

    3% picked this

  3. The high level of competition

    Unrelated to Goal

    If it's not a rule that says "if xyz, then fair", then it's totally useless to us. We need to combine our answer choice with the evidence in order to mathematically derive, "these salaries are fair". The evidence never mentions or defines "fair", so the answer choice will have to.

    3% picked this

  4. Correct

    Any salary that a team

    Why this is right

    This has the form "If xyz, then fair". if team owner is willing to then the pay salary X for the ? salary is fair services of a pro athlete Do we know that team owners are willing to pay the salaries of these pro athletes? Yes, we have a premise saying "owners are willing to pay them extraordinary salaries". So according to this rule, those salaries are fair. Thus, combining this answer with the evidence has allowed us to logically derive the conclusion. Formally, the Conclusion is creating this logic path: Salaries -------------------------------------> fair The evidence provides one part of the path Salaries --> owners willing to pay them The correct answer provides the other part. owners willing ----------> fair to pay them

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

    71% picked this

  5. If a professional athlete’s salary

    Reversed Logic

    We're looking for a rule that allows us to prove that something is fair, so we want something that's like "if xyz, then fair". This answer says "If fair, then xyz". That's useless to us. If we reversed the order of these two ideas, this answer would be fine, What we know is that the salaries are determined by what others are willing to pay. What we want to prove is that the salaries are fair. So we need a rule that takes us from what we know to what we're trying to prove. This reversed answer says, "If your conclusion happens to be right, then this second idea would definitely be true". Suppose we knew that Bob is an NBA star, and we wanted to prove that this means Bob is rich. Which of these rules do we want: 1. if you're rich, then you're definitely an NBA star 2. if you're an NBA star, then you're definitely rich 3. both Only #2 works. It takes us from what we know about Bob to what we're trying to prove about Bob.

    18% picked this

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