Logical Reasoning

PT126 · S3 · Q18 Many parents rigorously

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Many parents rigorously organize their children's activities during playtime, thinking that doing so will enhance their children's cognitive development.

Conclusion

Rigorously structuring playtime for your kid will not enhance the kid’s cognitive development.

Evidence

Expecting rigorous playtime to produce a creative and resourceful kid is like thinking that imposing a rigorous plot/character structure on a writer will result in the writer making a good novel.

Evaluation

This argument relies on a comparison/analogy, so we object to these sorts of arguments by pointing out meaningful differences.

Is there some reason why imposing a plot/characters on a writer wouldn’t have good results, but imposing a rigorous schedule on a child could help his/her cognitive development?

Novelists are usually full-grown adults, whereas kids have developing brains, so maybe we could say that rigorous structure is good for a developing brain, even if it isn’t great for creative adult tasks like novel writing.

The author has also not spelled out the missing part of his analogy: he’s assuming that if you told someone what plot/characters they had to use, they would not be likely to produce a good novel. The author is also drifting from the idea of “enhancing cognitive development” to the idea of “creative and resourceful child”.

Goal

Look for an answer spelling out the author’s missing assumption, the author’s language drift, or, more likely, pointing out a salient difference between the effect of structure on a child’s brain vs. the effect of imposing structure on a novelist.

18.

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

  1. It takes for granted that

    Bad Premise Match / Negation

    This answer accuses the author of saying, “Since X is conducive to goal Y, it will also be conducive to goal Z.” Instead, the author is arguing, “Since X is not conducive to goal Y, it will also not be conducive to goal Z”. This answer is a negation of what the author argued.

    8% picked this

  2. It overlooks the possibility that

    Out of Scope: "enjoy"

    It’s irrelevant to the argument whether children enjoy their rigorous playtime. It’s only relevant whether it enhances their cognitive development.

    1% picked this

  3. It takes a necessary condition

    Wrong Flaw: Necessary vs. Sufficient

    Does this author commit a flaw of conditional logic? (that’s what we mean when we talk about the famous Necessary vs. Sufficient flaw) No, there’s no conditional logic, so this answer can’t match the argument.

    5% picked this

  4. It fails to consider the

    Out of Scope: “good novel requires”

    The author isn’t ever identifying something that good novels require (other than maybe the freedom to choose one’s own plot and characters). The conclusion is about kids / playtime / cognitive development, so we’re not here to object to what it takes to write a good novel. We want to object that “whatever you said about writing novels doesn’t invalidate the idea that rigorous structure helps a child’s cognitive development”.

    4% picked this

  5. Correct

    It fails to consider the

    Why this is right

    This weakens by attacking the author’s language shift. The conclusion is about whether or not something would enhance a child’s cognitive development. The evidence is about whether something would produce a creative and resourceful child. This answer speaks to that mismatch: maybe imposing structure wouldn’t help to produce a creative/resourceful child, but it could still help their cognitive development in other ways.

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

    82% picked this

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