Logical Reasoning

PT141 · S4 · Q19 Young people believe efforts

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Young people believe efforts to reduce pollution, poverty, and war are doomed to failure.

Conclusion

We must enable our children to believe that better futures are possible.

Evidence

Young people are pessimistic about reducing pollution, poverty, and war. This pessimism is harmful because people lose motivation to work for goals they think are unrealizable. We must prevent this loss of motivation.

Evaluate

The argument moves from "we must prevent the loss of motivation" to That step only works if enabling that belief actually does prevent the loss of motivation. Negation: if enabling the belief does not prevent the motivation loss, the recommendation doesn't serve the goal — and the conclusion fails.

Goal

Find the assumption linking "enable belief in better futures" to "preventing loss of motivation." Most directly: enabling that belief actually does prevent the loss of motivation that pessimism causes.

19.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

Motivating people to work to
Reversal / Negation
The argument's recommendation is "enable belief → preserve motivation." This answer goes the other way: motivating people causes them to believe better futures. That's the reverse direction. The argument doesn't need (or use) that reversed link.
11% picked this
Correct
Enabling people to believe that
Why this is right
This is the bridge. The argument's goal is to prevent loss of motivation caused by pessimism. The recommended action is to enable belief that better futures are possible. For the action to serve the goal, enabling that belief must actually prevent the loss of motivation. Negation test: if enabling the belief does NOT help prevent the loss of motivation, then the recommended action doesn't serve the goal, and "we must do this" doesn't follow. The argument depends on this link.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
77% picked this
Optimism about the future is
Out of Scope
The argument doesn't need optimism to be better than pessimism in the abstract, and it certainly doesn't need optimism to be valuable even when illusory. It just needs the recommended action to address the motivation problem. Negate this answer (optimism is not better when illusory) and the argument still goes through — we're not told the optimism the author has in mind is illusory.
4% picked this
If future generations believe that
Too Strong
The argument doesn't need belief in better futures to eliminate pollution, poverty, and war. The conclusion is more modest: we must enable that belief in order to preserve motivation. Negate this answer (belief doesn't eliminate the problems) and the conclusion still stands — we still want to preserve motivation. This goes way beyond what the argument needs.
4% picked this
The current prevalence of such
Out of Scope
The argument is forward-looking — about preventing the current generation's loss of motivation. It doesn't need any claim about what caused current problems. Negate this (previous generations' beliefs were not the cause) and the argument is unaffected; we still want to preserve motivation in the next generation regardless of what caused the world's current state.
3% picked this

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