Logical Reasoning

PT126 · S4 · Q16 There are two kinds of horror

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There are two kinds of horror stories: those that describe a mad scientist’s experiments and those that describe a monstrous beast.

Statements

Comparison (2 kinds of horror stories)

Type 1: mad scientist | Type 2: monstrous beast

most of these some of these express author's monster symbolizes skepticism about "inner monster" of science protagonist

all of these i. describe violations of laws of nature ii. intended to produce dread in reader

Evaluate

What a mess! There are too many facts to know where they want to go with this one. When we see quantifiers being bandied about, such as Some / Most / All, the biggest priority is the All / None statements, because those are Conditionals.

The final sentence gives us this conditional:

describe violations of laws of nature Horror Story → and intended to produce dread

A lot of Inference questions that use quantifiers have correct answers that just establish that Two Traits Overlap.

Given a conditional like A → B and C, if we hear a fact like Some A's are X we can infer that X overlaps with B X overlaps with C

Goal

Stay flexible. Look for a possible Two Traits Overlap inference, but who knows what they'll try to connect.

16.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following would also have to be true?

  1. All descriptions of monstrous beasts

    Unknown Group

    Unknown Group: all descriptions of monstrous beasts We don't have any information about the group of all descriptions of monstrous beasts. We know about some of the descriptions on that list (the ones that happen to be horror stories), but we don't have any information about all descriptions.

    18% picked this

  2. Any story that describes a

    Unsupported Conditional

    We were given a rule that says A → B and C This answer choice is taking that rule and saying, B → C That's not a legal conditional inference. We know: horror story → violate nature and invoke dread This says: violate nature → invoke dread We don't know anything about "the set of all stories that describe violations of laws of nature". We know about some items in that set (horror stories), but we were never told about that entire class of stories.

    8% picked this

  3. Horror stories of any kind

    Too Strong: usually

    Usually = most = more than 50% Do we know that more than 50% of horror stories have characters who are psychologically disturbed? No we just knew that some horror stories do that.

    1% picked this

  4. Most stories about mad scientists

    Too Strong: most

    Do we know anything about more than 50% of stories about mad scientists? No. We know that more than 50% of horror stories about mad scientists express the author's antiscientific views. But horror stories are just a subset of all stories about mad scientists, so we can't judge whether the frequency of antiscientific views within all stories about mad scientists is greater than 50%. (Also, I would quarrel with saying "feeling that scientific knowledge alone is not enough to guide human endeavor" should not be equated with being antiscientific)

    4% picked this

  5. Correct

    Some stories that employ symbolism

    Why this is right

    We should be very attracted to the weak strength of language. This is what Two Traits Overlap inferences usually sound like. In our original Comparison breakdown, we can see that these two traits do overlap. Type 1: mad scientist | Type 2: monstrous beast most of these some of these express author's monster symbolizes skepticism about "inner monster" of science protagonist all of these i. describe violations of laws of nature ii. intended to produce dread in reader Another way to look at it is that we got an all-important Conditional: Horror Violate Nature Story → and Cause Dread We were told that some horror stories (ones about monstrous beasts) employ symbolism, as the beast symbolizes the protagonist's disturbed psyche. Since these are horror stories, we are guaranteed they also describe violations of nature and are intended to produce dread. So we know that some horror stories about monstrous beasts both employ symbolism and describe violations of the laws of nature.

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

    69% picked this

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