Logical Reasoning

PT140 · S2 · Q10 A recent study showed that people

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A recent study showed that people who address problems quickly and directly are significantly less likely to have gum disease than are people who react to problems by refusing to think about them.

Conclusion (clearly indicate that)

Some forms of gum disease are caused or aggravated by suppression of the immune system.

Evidence (since)

Stress can have a negative effect on the immune system + People who address problems quickly/directly are way less likely to get gum disease than are people who refuse to think about problems.

Evaluate

This argument is almost incomprehensible to understand on a first read because of the assumptions being made.

We have to figure out how gum disease / immune system are related, and we need to figure out how stress and people's rate of addressing problems are related (our common sense tells us to pair up these somewhat related ideas).

The author's conclusion is making a causal claim:

suppressed → some gum immune system disease

When we look at the premises we have to ask ourselves how the author thinks each idea connects to this causal path.

The premise that would be saying that Stress is causing "suppressed immune system".

stress → suppressed → gum immune disease

So what about the premise that ?

This is a Curious Comparison, so our author will probably be trying to come up with some causal explanation for,

Like with almost all correlations, our author will assume that one side causes the other. Since the author's conclusion is saying that something is causing gum disease, we know that our author is interpreting this direction of causality: addressing problems lowers your risk of quickly / directly gum disease

What does stress, in the 2nd premise, have to do with this?

Apparently the causal story the author is envisioning is that

1. you refuse to think about problems 2. that causes stress 3. that causes worse immune 4. that causes gum disease

Goal

Because this is Necessary Assumption and we're dealing with a Curious Fact / Explanation argument, we would expect a correct answer to either

rule out an alternate explanation for why "address problems quickly" is correlated with "less gum disease" or establish something that needs to be true for the author's explanation to be plausible

Since her story currently involves a really big missing link, refusing to think of problems → stress the answer will probably address that.

10.

The argument requires the assumption that

painful conditions will interfere with
Out of Scope Causal Relationship
This paragraph was never thinking about something affecting our ability to address problems quickly vs. reluctantly. It was only thinking about our habit of addressing problems quickly vs. reluctantly affecting something else (our stress level).
1% picked this
Correct
refusing to think about something
Why this is right
This is the first link in the author's imagined causal chain. refuse to more worse gum think about ? stress ? immune ? disease problems If refusing to think about problems has nothing to do with (does not contribute to) your stress level, then the author's 1st premise about gum disease / refusing to think has nothing to do with his 2nd premise about stress / immune. If those premises have nothing to do with each other, then the author won't be able to link them to make his gum disease / immune conclusion.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
78% picked this
people who have highly stressful
Too Specific: highly stressful lives Opposite
Our author is assuming that the people who refuse to address problems are more stressed, because that's how he's connecting a weakened immune system to gum disease. So the gist of this answer goes against what the author was envisioning. Our author is also only talking about someone's stress going up from them habitually refusing to confront their problems. He isn't ever talking about groups of people who do / don't have highly stressful lives.
2% picked this
people who tend to address
Too Strong
Too Strong: invariably at first sign Weakens, if anything The author has spoken in safe generalities. He has never committed to the insanely strong claim that "every single person who tends to address problems head-on will invariably, with no exceptions ever, seek dental care at the very first sign of problems". We can't prove he's thinking this, and negating it wouldn't come close to weakening the argument. The negation would only be, "Oh, author --- there has been at least one time that a person who tends to address problems head-on waited to seek dental care at the second sign of problems." That one data point couldn't hurt the author at all.
8% picked this
the reason some people refuse
Out of Scope Causal Relationship
This argument only cares about what effect refusing to think about problems has (doing so causes stress, the author assumes). It doesn't deal with what causes someone to refuse to think about problems.
10% picked this

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