Logical Reasoning

PT129 · S2 · Q11 Pat: E-mail fosters anonymity

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Pat: E-mail fosters anonymity, which removes barriers to self- revelation.

Pat

Because email is anonymous, people are more inclined to reveal themselves, which gets to a level of intimacy that otherwise would take years of personal contact to achieve.

Amar

Being bluntly honest (in an anonymous email) is not the same thing as intimacy. Actual intimacy requires a social bond that can only be made with direct personal contact.

Evaluation

It sounds like they're disagreeing about intimacy. Pat thinks that intimacy is achieved when we are being self-revelatory. Amar doesn't think that this alone qualifies as intimacy. He thinks social bonds are required.

Goal

Look for something surrounding whether or not something qualifies as intimacy: - whether being self-revealing is / isn't sufficient to be intimacy - whether direct personal contact is / isn't required to have intimacy

11.

The dialogue most strongly supports the claim that Pat and Amar disagree with each other about whether

  1. barriers to self-revelation hinder the

    Half Scope

    Yes, Pat would agree with this, but Amar doesn't weigh in on whether barriers to self-revelation have any effect on intimacy.

    5% picked this

  2. E-mail can increase intimacy between

    Both Agree

    No one is going to argue the extreme claim that "email cannot ever increase intimacy between friends", so they would likely agree with this. We know Pat thinks intimacy can be achieved over email, and Amar thinks that intimacy is possible between friends (who have had personal contact but may nonetheless also interact over email).

    8% picked this

  3. Correct

    intimacy between those who communicate

    Why this is right

    Correct: Pat says Yes, Amar says No This gets at the second of our predictions: whether direct personal contact is / isn't necessary. Since Amar thinks direct personal contact is necessary for intimacy, he would be committed to the idea that if you communicate "solely by email" then you don't have direct personal contact and thus you can't have intimacy. Pat, meanwhile, clearly believes that email can promote intimacy that would otherwise be achieved through years of direct personal contact, so she seems to believe that email itself can create the intimacy.

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

    83% picked this

  4. real social bonds always lead

    Too Strong: "always"

    Both of them would probably disagree with this because of how strongly it's worded. Amar thinks that social bonds are necessary for intimacy, but this answer is claiming that they are sufficient to always produce intimacy.

    2% picked this

  5. the use of e-mail removes

    Half Scope

    We know that Pat would agree that this does occur in at least some cases. But we haven't heard anything from Amar that would allow us to infer his opinions on whether email can ever remove barriers to frankness. If anything, he seems to accept Pat's notion that email can lead to more self-revelation / frankness.

    2% picked this

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