Logical Reasoning

PT126 · S3 · Q11 Biologist: Many paleontologists

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Biologist: Many paleontologists have suggested that the difficulty of adapting to ice ages was responsible for the evolution of the human brain.

Conclusion

The difficulty of adapting to ice ages was not a causal factor in the evolution of the human brain.

Evidence

Most other animals adapted to ice ages with no evolutionary changes to their brains.

Evaluation

In simple terms, the author seems to be thinking, . This is a sketchy move; naturally, some things could be unique to a given species. We could call it a sampling problem: the author assumes that humans are a representative sample, so that what is true for most animals would be true for them. What if humans are an atypical sample?

We could also maybe call it a soft version of Necessary vs. Sufficient. We have paleontologists saying, , and the author is arguing, We would respond,

Goal

Look for something like, or something that speaks more formally to the Sampling or Necessary vs. Sufficient issues.

11.

The biologist's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?

  1. It fails to address adequately

    Reversal

    Close, but we need this type of structure to say, “Even if your premise is true, it may not be that your conclusion is true”. So a correct re-write of this answer would sound like, “even if a condition does not necessarily produce an effect in one species, it may still be sufficient to produce that effect in another species”. In other words, even if ice ages didn’t change the brains of most animals, they may have still changed the brains of humans.

    4% picked this

  2. Correct

    It fails to address adequately

    Why this is right

    This correctly has “even if your premise is true, your conclusion might be wrong”. It says, even if ice ages didn’t produce brain changes in other species, they may have produced brain changes in humans.

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

    80% picked this

  3. It overlooks the possibility that

    Too Strong: “needed”

    We never discussed whether a certain condition was needed to produce a change. This answer would be objecting to an argument that said, “Since brain evolution was required for humans to get through ice ages, other animals must have also had brain evolution as a result of going through an ice age”. We could fix this answer by making it sound more like, “overlooks that a condition that did not produce a change in other species could still have produced a change in one species”.

    12% picked this

  4. It presumes without warrant that

    Opposite

    If anything, the author is assuming that humans are similar to other species, because he is assuming that what was true of most species would also be true of humans. So the author would be closer to assuming the opposite of this answer choice: that humans were not presented with much greater difficulties during ice ages than were most other species.

    1% picked this

  5. It takes for granted that,

    Wrong Flaw: Correlation vs. Causality

    If anything, the author is assuming that humans are similar to other species, because he is assuming that what was true of most species would also be true of humans. So the author would be closer to assuming the opposite of this answer choice: that humans were not presented with much greater difficulties during ice ages than were most other species.

    3% picked this

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