Artist: Almost everyone in this country

Answer choices

1. A

   Circular Reasoning2% picked this

   contains a premise that presupposes the truth of

   This says one of the premises secretly assumes the conclusion. That's circular reasoning, and it's not what's happening here. The premise (about people the artist knows) is genuinely independent of the conclusion (about everyone in the country) — too independent, in fact. The flaw is sampling, not circularity.

   2%
2. B

   Part vs. Whole3% picked this

   presumes that what is true of each person in a country is also true of the country's

   This describes a part-vs.-whole flaw — assuming what's true of each individual is true of the group as a whole. But the conclusion here is about almost every person in the country (which is just the same individual-level claim, scaled up), not about a group-level property like "the country, as a whole, is artistic." There's no shift from individual to collective property. The flaw is sampling.

   3%
3. C

   Inappropriate Appeals1% picked this

   defends a view solely on the grounds that the view is

   The argument is not "this view is widely held, therefore it's true." The artist isn't claiming that wanting to be an artist is correct because everyone wants it — the artist is making an empirical claim about how widespread the desire is. There's no appeal to popularity as evidence of correctness.

   1%
4. D

   Correct91% picked this

   bases its conclusion on a sample that is unlikely to accurately represent people in the

   Why this is right

   This is the move exactly. The artist's sample — "everyone I know" — is the people in the artist's social circle. Artists tend to have other aspiring artists in their circles, so this sample is unlikely to look anything like the country's general population. Drawing a conclusion about almost everyone in the country from such a sample is the textbook unrepresentative-sample flaw.

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

   91%
5. E

   Equivocation3% picked this

   fails to make a needed distinction between wanting to be an artist and making a

   This says the argument fails to distinguish two related concepts (wanting to be an artist vs. making a living as one). But the argument's conclusion is explicitly about wanting to be an artist, and the premise lines up with hopes of making a living as one. Even if these aren't identical, the conclusion is the more permissive one (just wanting), so the leap from premise to conclusion would actually go through. The argument's real flaw is sampling, not a slip between two senses.

   3%