Logical Reasoning

PT133 · S3 · Q15 It was misleading

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It was misleading for James to tell the Core Curriculum Committee that the chair of the Anthropology Department had endorsed his proposal.

Conclusion

James was misleading when he told the Core Curriculum Committee that the Anthropology chair had endorsed his proposal.

rephrase: What he said was technically true, but it gives off the wrong impression.

Evidence

The chair's endorsement was conditional: it applied only if what she was looking at was the same set of recommendations as what James was showing the committee.

Evaluate

The idea of "misleading" is that it's technically true but giving off the wrong impression.

In a sense, James DID have the chair's endorsement. She was like, .

The author is saying this gives off the wrong impression. It makes people think that the chair endorsed James's proposal even though she really didn't.

That seems to imply that the version James is submitting to the committee is NOT the same as the one he got conditionally approved by the chair.

Goal

This argument has one clear missing idea, so it's very likely that our prediction will be similar to the answer.

If the proposal James is presenting to the committee is the same as what he showed to the chair, then he genuinely DID get her endorsement.

It's only misleading to say he got her endorsement if the proposal James is offering the committee is different in some way from what he showed the chair.

15.

The argument relies on which one of the following assumptions?

  1. If the chair of the

    Out of Scope

    This doesn't resemble our prephrase, so we shouldn't be fully reading it on a first pass. Ultimately, this is describing a strong relationship that the author doesn't need to assume. This is saying that the CCC's approval of the proposal greatly hinges on the chair's endorsement. That doesn't need to be true. The author is only trying to argue that "saying the chair endorsed the proposal" is misleading. Her argument doesn't care whether the CCC ultimately implements the proposal or not.

    2% picked this

  2. The chair of the Anthropology

    Bad Assumption

    The author doesn't need to think that there's not a single additional recommendation in the world that the chair would have approved of. The ones in the draft she saw are the only ones she'd be okay with! The author just needs to think that there is at least one additional recommendation that the chair might not have approved of. That's what creates the space for 'misleading'. The author can say, "the chair endorsed your draft proposal, which had 4 recommendations. The proposal before committee has a 5th, and we don't know whether or not the chair would endorse that new recommendation. So it's misleading to say she endorsed this proposal."

    4% picked this

  3. James thought that the Core

    Bad Assumption

    We aren't here to speculate on why James might have said this misleading thing about the chair's endorsement. We're only here to evaluate whether James's claim is in fact misleading. It doesn't matter whether he's aware that it's misleading, whether it's accidentally misleading or intentionally misleading, or what his motives would have been for being intentionally misleading. We're only trying to figure out, "Did the chair really endorse James's proposal, or is it misleading to say that?"

    5% picked this

  4. James thought that the chair

    Bad Assumption

    Since the author believes that James's proposal is different from the draft proposal the chair endorsed, and since the author is saying it's therefore misleading to say the chair endorsed the proposal, the author is worried that there's a new recommendation in James's proposal that the chair wouldn't have actually endorsed, had she seen it. This answer is pointing towards the opposite -- that if there is new stuff in the proposal going before committee, it's stuff that the chair would endorse. That would make it seem more like James is conveying the accurate truth when he says the chair has endorsed this. So, if anything, this answer points in a weakening direction. Ultimately what James thinks is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if he thinks the chair would agree to the new recommendations he added, or even if he's correct and she would have agreed to these extra recommendations. It's still factually wrong to say she approved this proposal, if she never saw this actual proposal (i.e. if this proposal is different from the draft proposal).

    2% picked this

  5. Correct

    The draft proposal that the

    Why this is right

    Here we finally get the Assumed Difference. The author is saying, "the chair didn't really approve this proposal, [because this proposal isn't the same as the draft proposal she saw]." When we look at the conditional rule the chair provided to James, it reads, "if the draft proposal didn't include all the recommendations he'd ultimately make, then his proposal doesn't have her endorsement." The author's conclusion is suggesting that the chair didn't really endorse James's proposal. So the author must be assuming this trigger: the draft proposal didn't include all the recommendations he's now making to the CCC. If we negated this and said, "hey, author -- the proposal James is submitting to committee is the same as the draft proposal. It includes all the same recommendations", that would weaken. That would make it seem like the chair's initial/conditional endorsement would still apply to the eventual/actual proposal James submitted to the committee, which goes against the idea that "it's misleading to say the chair endorsed this proposal".

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

    87% picked this

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