Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S4 · Q19 Forester: The great majority of

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Forester: The great majority of the forests remaining in the world are only sickly fragments of the fully functioning ecosystems they once were.

Statements

Quantifiers (great majority / typically)

Most remaining forests are ... 1. sickly fragments, no longer functioning eco's 2. usually can't sustain themselves long term 3. include last refuges for most endangered species

Conditional (to do x requires y: X → Y

Maintaining full complement of regular interventions plants / animals in a → by resource fragmented forest managers

Evaluate

Whenever we're doing Inference questions and get a conditional, we have two immediate thoughts: 1. Are there other conditionals I'm supposed to chain this to? 2. Am I supposed to apply this rule to some fact(s) I was gives?

There aren't any other conditionals to consider chaining this up with. In order to apply a conditional to fact, you usually have to contrapose it (they like to make us work, to prove that we're smart).

The contrapositive of the last rule is saying,

If you don't have regular interventions by resource managers, then you won't retain the full complement of plant / animals species (i.e. you'll lose at least some species of plants, animals, or both).

Since we just heard that these fragmented forests are the last refuges for some of the world's most endangered species, losing those species would be particularly noteworthy.

Goal

We wouldn't be able to say for sure, in a must be true sense, then without regular intervention from resource managers we will definitely lose one those endangered species, but this is Most Supported.

So look for something connecting the interventions of resource managers to the fates of these endangered species.

19.

The forester's statements, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

  1. Correct

    Most of the world’s forests

    Why this is right

    We know that most of the world's forests are fragmented (per the 1st claim), and we know that fragmented forests do not retain their full complement of species, if they aren't regularly intervened in by resource managers. So putting those together we get this answer. Formally, this combines the Most claim at the beginning with the Conditional at the end. In essence, it's combining Most A's are B with B → C to derive Most A's are C Showing how this works symbolically will involve making some purposeful decisions in how we write these ideas (there are multiple valid ways to represent some of these claims). Most [forests in the world] are [fragmented] If [fragmented forest], then [maintaining all species requires interventions] or alternatively, If [fragmented forest], then [if no intervention, lose some species] Thus, Most [forests in the world] are [lose some species if no intervention]

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

    63% picked this

  2. Unless resource managers regularly intervene

    Too Strong: most

    We know that most remaining forests are fragmented. Within that subset of forests, we know are the last refuges for some of the world's most endangered species. Technically, that could be as little as one super-endangered species that has its last refuge in one of these fragmented forests. Furthermore, it may be that there are many super-endangered species that have their last refuge in a fragmented forest, but they could all have the same forest as their last hope (maybe there's a tropical forest in the Amazon that is the last refuge of like 50 super-endangered species). In short, we know more than 50% of the world's forests are fragmented, but we don't know what percent of those fragmented forests are the last refuge of an endangered species. It could be a very tiny number. Thus, it's not fair say, as this answer does, that "if there aren't regular interventions in most forests, that we'll lose many endangered species". There might be only about 5-10 fragmented forests that resource managers need to intervene in to protect all the super-endangered species.

    31% picked this

  3. A fragmented forest ecosystem cannot

    Unsupported Relationship Too Strong: loses any

    This is trying to draw a conditional relationship between two different sentences, but there were not multiple conditionals that would allow us to chain stuff together to derive any new conditional. This answer choice doesn't sound at all like common sense, because it's saying "if a fragmented forest loses even one plant or animal species, then it will not be able to sustain itself in the long term". It's crazy to think that every species in an ecosystem is that important to an ecosystem's long term ability to sustain itself.

    2% picked this

  4. A complete, fully functioning forest

    Trap

    Negated Logic Out of Scope: fully functioning The easiest way to get rid of this is simply to think, "We didn't receive any information about fully-functioning ecosystems. We only talked about ones that aren't fully functioning anymore." This answer is trying to bait us into illegally negating the final sentence. We were told, If a fragmented (no longer fully-functioning) forest, then requires regular interventions to maintain all species. This is trying to make us think, If not fragmented, (is fully-functioning), then doesn't require regular interventions to maintain all species.

    2% picked this

  5. At present, resource managers intervene

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: only some Out of Scope: at present We don't have any information about what resource managers currently do or don't do. We're only told what the consequences would be if they don't intervene in fragmented forests.

    2% picked this

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