Logical Reasoning

PT141 · S2 · Q11 Municipal legislator: The mayor

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Municipal legislator: The mayor proposes that the city accept a lighting company's gift of several high­-tech streetlights.

Conclusion (surely = opinion)

There would be no problem in accepting the lighting company's gift of several high-tech streetlights.

Evidence

Sure, some people fear that the company is trying to influence the city's decision regarding park lighting contracts.

But favoritism in city contracts is prevented by our competitive bidding procedure.

The only ulterior motive I can find is the company's desire to have its products seen by mayors who will visit the city for an upcoming convention.

Evaluate

We know that when we're doing Main Conclusion (or Role) questions, 90% of the time the conclusion will be earlier than the supporting ideas.

Specifically, the conclusion is usually - the first sentence - some pivot/rebuttal idea

The first sentence here is an attribution, telling us something someone else has said. That's typically the warm-up for a "but / yet / however, I disagree".

Here, though, the author is actually going along with the mayor and rebutting people who are against the mayor (despite SOME people's fear).

The author supports the idea that there's nothing wrong with taking this gift because the fear some people have is moot (there's no way to influence the decision regarding awarding contracts, given the competitive bidding procedure) and the only ulterior motive the author can think of wouldn't be harmful to the city in any way.

Goal

Let's find a meaning-match for the 2nd sentence.

11.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main conclusion of the municipal legislator's argument?

  1. Some people's fear that the

    Unstated Inference

    The author does seem to hold this position. She acknowledges "some people's fear" and then shows that it is not something to worry about, via her final sentence. So we could infer that the author believes that their fear is unfounded. But is "Their fear is unfounded" our best meaning-match for "Surely there would be no problem in accepting this gift of streetlights"? We should keep this on a first pass, but ultimately (B) is a much closer paraphrase of the 2nd sentence. We would use "their fear is unfounded" as support for the main conclusion that "thus, there's nothing wrong with accepting the gift".

    11% picked this

  2. Correct

    The mayor's proposal to accept

    Why this is right

    This is the best available meaning-match for the 2nd sentence, which said "There would be no problem in accepting the gift of these free streetlights." i.e., accepting the gift is not problematic

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

    60% picked this

  3. It is not appropriate that

    Unstated / Opposite

    This looks nothing like the 2nd sentence, because this is talking about displaying products at the upcoming convention, which the 2nd sentence does not discuss. If we choose to read it more carefully, we'd see that it's also offering an opinion that seems to go against what our author is saying. Our author seems at peace with the quid pro quo of "Our city gets these free streetlights, and this lighting company gets to show off its cool streetlights to other cities' mayors when the mayors visit our town for the convention".

    2% picked this

  4. The city's competitive-bidding procedure prevents

    Premise Last-Claim Trap

    We want to always be super sketched out about picking the last claim as the conclusion on Main Conclusion, since it's only the final claim about 10% of the time. This is a fact. And it's unsupported. The author didn't try to persuade us that the competitive bidding procedure prevents favoritism. No supporting claims are offered on its behalf. The author uses this idea to establish that we don't have to worry about lighting company's gift earning it any undue favoritism, which is used to establish the idea that there's no problem in accepting the gift.

    21% picked this

  5. The lighting company's desire to

    Premise

    We could potentially call this premise an Intermediate Conclusion because the final sentence somewhat offers support. "why should we believe that the lighting company's real desire in offering the free gift is to show off its lights at the upcoming convention? Because ... it's not like they can otherwise curry favor when it comes to awarding contracts, as contracts are awarded via a competitive bidding procedure." But this idea supports the Main Conclusion. "Since the lighting company's motivation in offering this gift is simply to show off their lights to mayors at the upcoming convention, there's surely no problem in us accepting this gift."

    5% picked this

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