Logical Reasoning

PT13 · S2 · Q22 Mark: Plastic‐foam cups, which

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Mark: Plastic‐foam cups, which contain environmentally harmful chlorofluorocarbons, should no longer be used; paper cups are preferable.

Mark's Conclusion

Plastic shouldn't be used / paper cups are preferable.

Mark's Evidence

Plastic-foam cups have harmful CFC's. Also, styrene is generated in foam production and it's a carcinogen, and foam cups persist indefinitely in the environment.

Tina's Conclusion

Plastic cups are a better choice than paper cups.

Tina's Evidence

To make a paper cup, you burn more petrol than to make a foam cup and you use 12 times as much steam, 36 times as much electricity, and twice as much water. Also, transporting paper cups takes more energy than moving plastic cups. Paper mills produce water pollution, and when they decay they produce the bad greenhouse gas of methane.

Evaluate

Wow. There were a lot of pros and cons when it came to plastic cups vs. paper cups. In order to decide which one is better / worse, we might need to rank the importance of some of these tradeoffs.

Do we care more about carcinogens / environmental harm from CFC's / lack of decomposition in the environment?

Or do we care more about saving petroleum / steam / electricity / water, as well as preventing a global warming gas from emitting?

Goal

Look for an answer that's posing a question that would us decide whether we prefer plastic cups or paper cups, especially one that helps us rank these pros and cons against each other.

22.

To decide the issue between Mark and Tina, it would first be most important to decide

how soon each of the
Weak Impact
If we knew that X would be at its maximum level of harm in 20 years but Y would be at its maximum level of harm in 50 years, does that tell us which one to pick? Not really, because we need to also know whether the max level of harm is comparable. If X involves 100 units of harm but comes in 20 years, that still might be better than Y, if Y involves 500 units of harm but doesn't reach that for 50 years.
8% picked this
whether members of some societies
No Impact: comparing societies
This is helping us rank one society vs. another, in terms of who uses more disposable goods. But we're trying to decide whether plastic cups are a better/worse disposable good than paper cups. This answer has nothing to do with helping us decide on whether plastic or paper is the better route to go.
1% picked this
whether it is necessary to
No Impact: third alternative
The issue being debated is whether "paper cups are preferable" vs. "plastic is the better choice". It's a head to head battle for which is better. We're not fighting over which one is the best, so if there's some third option that is better than both plastic and paper, that won't pick a winner in this dispute. That would just mean that they're both wrong to be arguing for paper or plastic.
14% picked this
Correct
how much of the chains
Why this is right
This is a pretty miserable answer, but it seems to be the best available. Both authors brought up factors about plastic and paper cups that related to their production and disposal. In analyzing the environmental impact of paper cups, should we consider that the production process is worse? (it involves more steam, electricity, petroleum, and water) Should we consider that styrene is a bad by-product of the foam cup production process? Should we be considering the fact that paper cups degrade into methane or that foam cups contain CFC's? Answer the question posed by this answer would by no means settle the issue, because even once we decide which factors to consider, we would still need to weigh them against each other. But answering this question is at least relevant to the debate over plastic vs. paper. The only other answer that can boast relevance is (A), but answering the question in (A) would be less helpful overall in moving the debate forward than would answering this question. Ultimately, this problem from Ye Olde Test 13 seems weird enough to me that it's probably better to "let it go" than to try to derive a usable takeaway, because that latter thing probably doesn't exist.
Skill tested: Evaluate · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
76% picked this
whether paper and foam cups,
No Impact
It doesn't make any difference whether the most popular sizes of paper cups vs. foam cups are identical capacity or somewhat different capacities. Knowing "same" vs. "not-same" is not going to help us decide whether to go with paper or foam.
1% picked this

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