Logical Reasoning

PT139 · S4 · Q21 If Skiff's book is published

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If Skiff’s book is published this year, Professor Nguyen vows she will urge the dean to promote Skiff.

Conclusion

The book is as important and as well → Skiff will be promoted written as Skiff claims

Evidence

N recommends Skiff's book → dean will promote Skiff

Skiff's book is published → Nguyen recommends S's book

Evaluate

We can chain together the two conditionals:

Skiff's book is → Nguyen will → Dean will published recommend promote Skiff to dean

Since our goal is to prove that Skiff will be promoted, and this chain ends with Skiff being promoted, we know our job is to trigger this chain.

So, we need an answer to convince us that S's book will be published. Once we establish that, these rules take us on a logic conveyor belt ride to "the book getting promoted".

Do we have any reason to think that Skiff's book will be published?

No, so that has to be in our correct answer. The conclusion is teasing this new idea of .

If S claimed that the book was "very important" or "very well written", then we could use a rule like, .

However, we don't know how important or well written Skiff claimed the book was.

Goal

Primarily, we're looking for an answer that establishes that Skiff's book will be published, because that idea will guarantee our conclusion.

Based on how the conclusion is written, we might guess it will say .

21.

The argument's conclusion can be properly inferred if which one of the following is assumed?

  1. Correct

    Skiff's book will be published

    Why this is right

    If it's as important → the book will be published as he claims This is similar, but notably different, from our prediction. They intended for that difference to short circuit us. We were expecting "If as important and well written as claimed, will be published", or A and B → C This is giving us A → C Suppose we know that "If there's karaoke at a party, Josie will have fun". If there's karaoke and Jenga at a party, do we know if Josie will have fun? Yes! The rule we just read said, if there's karaoke, it's a 100% guarantee that Josie will have fun. So adding in Jenga doesn't make us question that original conditional. We already must believe that Josie will have fun, since a party with karaoke and Jenga still involves karaoke at a party. On Sufficient Assumption (especially more modern examples), don't think about the correct answer needing to be the perfect missing link you solved for. Think about the answers flexibly. If we add them to the claims we were given in the evidence, can we derive the conclusion? This answer allows to construct this chain: If S's book is as important as he claims, it gets published, which means Nguyen recommends to dean, which means dean promotes Skiff. So have we proven our Conclusion, that says "If Skiff's book is as important and as well written as he claims, then he'll get promoted"? Sure. If Skiff's book is as important and as well written as he claims, then it's as important as he claims, and thus the book will be published, Nguyen will recommend to the dean, and the dean will promote Skiff

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

    48% picked this

  2. Skiff needs to publish a

    No Impact

    Our only concern is establishing that Skiff's book will get published. This asserts a need Skiff has to have it published, but that barely, if at all, strengthens the notion that it will get published. How badly Skiff wants / needs it to be published probably doesn't matter. The decision is out of Skiff's hands. It's about whether or not a publisher wants to publish it.

    10% picked this

  3. Professor Nguyen believes that Skiff's

    Unrelated to Goal

    Since this answer contains no wording about Skiff's book getting published, we don't really need to examine it. As it turns out, it's bringing up something irrelevant, in the sense that Nguyen's role in this argument is just to recommend the promotion to the dean, assuming Skiff's book gets published. We have no reason to think that Skiff's book getting published hinges in any way on Nguyen's evaluation of how well-written it is.

    5% picked this

  4. Skiff's book will not be

    Reversed / Backwards Logic

    It's hard to do a Sufficient Assumption question without encountering an answer choice that has the correct ideas in the wrong logical sequence. We wanted if as imp and well-written → book will be as Skiff claimed published This gives us the illegal light switch version of that: if not as important book will not and well-written → be published as Skiff claimed

    28% picked this

  5. Skiff will not be promoted

    Unrelated to Goal

    Since this answer contains no wording about Skiff's book getting published, we don't really need to examine it. This answer just increases the importance of Nguyen's role in getting Skiff promoted, but we didn't need to be convinced that Nguyen's role was necessary. We know it's sufficient, and all we're trying to do is trigger Nguyen's recommendation (by finding an answer that establishes that Skiff's book will be published).

    9% picked this

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