Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S2 · Q25 Cecile’s association requires public disclosure

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Cecile’s association requires public disclosure of an officer’s investments in two cases only: when an officer is authorized to disburse association funds, and when an officer sits on the board of a petrochemical company.

Conclusion (therefore)

There is no reason for Cecile to publicly disclose her investments at this time.

Evidence

Her association only requires public disclosure if you're an officer who's authorized to disburse association funds, or if you sit on the board of a petrochemical company.

Cecile is not authorized to disburse funds, and she only sits on the board of a small timber business.

Evaluate

We're trying to prove "Cecile doesn't need to publicly disclose" and we have a conditional rule that says,

not authorized to disburse funds not req'd and → to publicly not on board of petrochem comp disclose

The author seems to establish both parts of the trigger. Ceclie is definitely not authorized to disburse funds. And if she's only on the board of one small timber business, then does that mean she's not on the board of a petrochemical company?

Could the wiggle room be that this small timber business is also a petrochemical company?

That seems like a far-fetched objection. 1) if it's both petrochemical and timber, then we wouldn't refer to it as "a timber business".

2) if it's both, then we probably wouldn't call it a "small business"

For many of us (including this explanation writer, the first time I did this problem), this argument is confusing because it seems to be valid.

Other than our far-fetched objection that , the author has successfully proven that Cecile isn't required to disclose her investments. If we're feeling stumped, it's okay to head to the answers to see if any of them can alert us to the potential wiggle room we're missing.

For other people, they might see extra leap the conclusion is taking. The premises successfully convince us that , because Cecile doesn't qualify for either of the two cases in which disclosure is required.

But that doesn't mean . Maybe she's running for President and needs to publicly disclose her investments because candidates (almost) always release their tax returns to the public.

Goal

If we found the gap, then we're basically looking for an answer that helps us get from .

It could say something like,

25.

The conclusion of the argument follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?

Cecile will not be appointed
Out of Scope: future
The conclusion we're trying to prove is only about the present tense ("at this time"), so anything about the future is totally irrelevant.
12% picked this
Cecile’s office and her position
Out of Scope: conflicts of interest
The concept of "conflicts of interest" appears nowhere in the argument. On Sufficient Assumption, correct answers almost never add a new concept. They are supposed to just be completing the logic circuit of the ideas that were already presented.
7% picked this
Correct
The association’s requirements provide the
Why this is right
The premises successfully proved that Cecile's association wouldn't require her to publicly disclose at this time. But the conclusion makes an unwarranted leap to the idea that "there is no reason for her to disclose", ignoring the possibility that there might be other reasons (such as running for public office) why she might have reason to publicly disclose her investments at this time. This answer extinguishes all such objections. It says, "Nope -- the association's rules are the only possible reason she'd have" If that's true, then Cecile currently has no reason to publicly disclose.
Skill tested: Sufficient Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
68% picked this
The timber business on whose
Weakens, if anything
The only other missing link we thought the argument might have was the (seemingly justifiable) move that "If she only sits on the board of a small timber business, then she does not sit on the board of a petrochemical business". This answer kind of looks like that, except it's going the opposite direction. It's making it seem like the timber business is also kind of a petrochemical business (in the sense that it's a subsidiary of a petrochemical business). That would only serve to weaken the argument, not to prove the conclusion.
5% picked this
Cecile owns no investments in
Out of Scope: investments
It's irrelevant whether Cecile has any investments in petrochemical. It only matters whether or not she sits on the board of a petrochemical company (which we are already told she does not).
9% picked this

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