The authorship of the Iliad

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Conclusion Match6% picked this

   If there is no overwhelming evidence for or against a hypothesis, then one should suspend judgment

   The first half of this perfectly matches the evidence, but the conclusion wasn't "suspend judgment as to its truth", it was "accept the verdict of tradition".

   6%
2. B

   Correct60% picked this

   If a hypothesis goes against tradition, one should not accept the hypothesis

   Why this is right

   If we contrapose this, it looks a lot more like our argument: If ... Then ... there isn't overwhelming should not accept evidence for a hypothesis that hypothesis that goes against tradition It ends up being a rule that applies to the newer not-Homer evidence. The hypothesis that Homer had nothing to do with either the Iliad or the Odyssey goes against tradition. We don't have overwhelming evidence for it. Thus, according to this answer, we should not accept that hypothesis. Through inertia, that leaves us continuing to go with the verdict of tradition. This answer certainly doesn't firmly prove we ought to accept the traditional verdict (it only proves we shouldn't accept the nontraditional verdict), but that's still the best strengthener up here.

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

   60%
3. C

   Bad Conclusion Match21% picked this

   If there is no overwhelming evidence for or against a hypothesis, one

   There is no overwhelming evidence for or against both of these hypotheses, so this rule would say that we should believe both hypotheses. The actual conclusion is that we should accept the verdict of tradition, and the other hypothesis contradicts that. So believing both hypotheses would be incoherently believing two contradictory things.

   21%
4. D

   Reversed Logic1% picked this

   One should accept the authority of tradition only if one has nontraditional evidence for

   Since the conclusion is "we should accept the verdict of tradition", we need a principle that puts that idea on the right of the arrow. Conclusions need to match the right side of the arrow. But here, the only if indicates that the idea following it goes on the right, so this answer would look like this: should accept the ? one has nontraditional authority of tradition evidence for trad hypothesis We can quickly ditch this answer once we see our conclusion is on the Left side, as it is functionally hopeless for us. As it turns out, the other half of the answer wouldn't match up with anything anyway. We never talk about nontraditional evidence.

   1%
5. E

   Bad Trigger Match12% picked this

   One should defer to the authority of tradition if two or more hypotheses

   This rule has the correct right side to it. two or more hypotheses ? should defer to conflict with tradition authority of tradition But can we match that trigger up with the evidence. Were we told that two or more hypotheses conflict with the traditional idea that Homer wrote both works? No, we were only told about one hypothesis ("he had nothing to do with either") that conflicts with that traditional idea.

   12%