Logical Reasoning

PT139 · S4 · Q9 Archaeologists are currently analyzing

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Archaeologists are currently analyzing plant remains found at a site that was last occupied more than 10,000 years ago.

Statements

They're studying plant remains form a site that hasn't been occupied in the last 10,000 years.

conditionals (if)

plants were people who lived at that site cultivated → discovered agriculture 1000's of years before 1st known ppl

plants were people who lived at that site not cultivated → ate a wider variety of wild plants than did their peers

Evaluate

Whenever we see conditional logic claims in an Inference question, we have two thoughts: 1. Am I supposed to chain this conditional to some other conditional? 2. Am I supposed to apply this conditional (usually via contrapositive) to some fact they gave me?

The two conditionals do chain. We could contrapose one and chain it to the other:

ppl there didn't plants ppl there ate discover agriculture → were not → wider variety 1000's of years cultivated than peers earlier than 1st known

However, the other thing that sticks out is that we're basically getting a prediction either way. If they were cultivated, we'd know X. If they were not cultivated, we'd know Y. So that means at least one of X and Y will be true.

Suppose we say: We know that we will play at least Scrabble or baseball (it's possible for both to be true as well).

And if there's a common denominator to both outcomes, then we know that for sure. For this example we could say, In Either Case we're "going to play some game".

Goal

Is there a common denominator between the two outcomes here?

vs.

It sounds like in either case, these people will be blowing our minds a little bit. They're either "setting a record" for 1st known use of agriculture or setting a record for widest variety of wild plants consumed.

9.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

  1. The archaeologists analyzing the plant

    Too Strong: will be able

    Just because we're being told what the takeaway will be if they determine X vs. if they determine not-X, that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll determine either one.

    14% picked this

  2. Correct

    The people who occupied the

    Why this is right

    This gets at the "In Either Case, these inhabitants are going to blow our minds" common denominator to the two outcomes. Either, these people - discovered agriculture 1000s of years before the first known occurrence (which implies they used plants to grow crops, i.e. agriculture, at a time when no one else is known to have done so) vs. - ate a wider variety of wild plants than did any other people at the time (they used plants in such a way that they ate plants W, X, Y, and Z, whereas other people only ate 2 or 3 from that list) This correct answer is definitely Most Supported, not Must Be True, because we don't know for sure that other cultures of the time weren't doing agriculture, but it's highly supportable.

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

    64% picked this

  3. If the people who occupied

    Out of Scope: more advanced stage

    The passage never talks about a "more advanced stage" of wild plants. We might think to ourselves, "Isn't agriculture a more advanced stage in the use of wild plants?" But agriculture means we're using cultivated plants, not wild plants. Wild plants is this second scenario where the group eats a wider variety than anyone else, but that doesn't necessarily mean they "reached a more advanced stage" in the use of wild plants. They might have just been fortunate enough to live where there was a wider than usual variety of edible wild plants.

    3% picked this

  4. If the people who occupied

    Reversed Logic

    This takes the first conditional, plants ppl who occupied site discovered were ? agriculture thousands of yrs before cultivated any other known people ... and just says it backwards. Classic conditional logic trap answer.

    17% picked this

  5. It is more likely that

    Unsupported Comparison: more likely

    We don't have any way to judge which of these two scenarios the author is describing is more likely to have been the truth. If anything, the more conservative guess is that they ate a wider variety of plants than others, not that we should blow up our timeline of when humans invented agriculture (we were off by thousands of years, in that case!)

    1% picked this

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