Logical Reasoning

PT141 · S4 · Q24 Clearly, a democracy cannot thrive

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Clearly, a democracy cannot thrive without effective news media.

Conclusion (Clearly)

A democracy cannot thrive without effective news media.

Evidence (after all)

A democracy cannot thrive without an electorate that is knowledgeable about important political issues.

An electorate can be knowledgeable only if it has access to unbiased information about the government.

Evaluate

On Sufficient Assumption it's always a great idea to ask ourselves whether there's a New Concept in the Conclusion (because it basically must be in the correct answer).

This conclusion talks about "effective news media", but none of the evidence says anything about effective news media, so effective news media must be in the correct answer.

That alone actually gets rid of 3 of the 5 answers.

Since we see conditional logic and repeating symbols here, this argument is a good contender for diagramming. The two premises chain together, via the overlapping ingredient of "an electorate being knowledgeable".

The conclusion is trying to prove that: no effective -------------------------> dem can't news media thrive

The evidence has provided us with this subset of that logic path: no acc to --> elect not --> dem can't unbiased knowledg thrive

So the correct answer has to give us that missing piece: no effective --> no acc to news media unbiased

If we don't like diagramming, then we can use our principle of Mentioned Twice? That'll Suffice.

The concepts of "democracy cannot thrive" and "knowledgeable electorate" each appear twice, so they are not missing links. That tells us that the missing link is between "effective news media" and "access to unbiased information".

Goal

Let's look for, , or its contrapositive, .

24.

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

  1. All societies that have effective

    Illegal Negation

    This answer just takes the conclusion, if no effective news media, then not thriving and does an illegal negation: if effective news media, then is thriving

    4% picked this

  2. If an electorate has access

    Unrelated to Goal

    Since this answer doesn't have the New Concept in the Conclusion ("effective news media"), it can't possibly be the answer. We're supposed to combine the correct answer with the premises in order to derive the conclusion. Since the premises don't ever mention "effective news media", if the answer also fails to mention "effective news media", then we can't possibly derive a conclusion about "effective news media".

    16% picked this

  3. A democracy will thrive if

    Unrelated to Goal

    Since this answer doesn't have the New Concept in the Conclusion ("effective news media"), it can't possibly be the answer. We're supposed to combine the correct answer with the premises in order to derive the conclusion. Since the premises don't ever mention "effective news media", if the answer also fails to mention "effective news media", then we can't possibly derive a conclusion about "effective news media".

    8% picked this

  4. A democracy cannot thrive if

    Unrelated to Goal

    Since this answer doesn't have the New Concept in the Conclusion ("effective news media"), it can't possibly be the answer. We're supposed to combine the correct answer with the premises in order to derive the conclusion. Since the premises don't ever mention "effective news media", if the answer also fails to mention "effective news media", then we can't possibly derive a conclusion about "effective news media".

    11% picked this

  5. Correct

    Without effective news media, an

    Why this is right

    This is the link we predicted. If we hadn't predicted it, then we could convince ourselves that this proves the conclusion by thinking, "Okay, without effective news, the electorate can't have access to unbiased information. According to the final claim, if the electorate doesn't have access to unbiased information then they can't be knowledgeable about political issues. If they are knowledgeable about political issues then a democracy can't thrive. So, yes, we've proven that without effective news a democracy can't thrive."

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

    62% picked this

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