Logical Reasoning

PT141 · S4 · Q5 While biodiversity is indispensable

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While biodiversity is indispensable to the survival of life on Earth, biodiversity does not require the survival of every currently existing species.

Conclusion

Biodiversity does not require the survival of every currently existing species.

Evidence

While life does require various niches to be filled, many niches can be filled by more than one species.

Evaluate

Whenever we do Main Conclusion (or Role) we remind ourselves that the 85-90% of the time the conclusion will be earlier than the evidence.

It's usually the First Sentence or some Pivot / Rebuttal idea in the middle.

Does this first sentence sound like an opinion from the author? Not really. There's no opinion indicator in there. It sounds more like a science-y nature fact.

But does the paragraph go on to support that first claim? Yes!

All the claims in this argument sound like science-y nature facts, so we can't differentiate the Conclusion by sorting out which claim is the opinion vs. which is the fact.

So we have to use our other tool () and if possible to use our test savvy and lean in to the expectation that the conclusion usually is earlier than the evidence.

Goal

We want to find the answer choice that gives us the best meaning match for .

We might rephrase that as something like, .

5.

Which one of the following statements most accurately expresses the conclusion drawn in the argument?

  1. Correct

    Biodiversity does not require that

    Why this is right

    This matches the 2nd claim in the first sentence, our conclusion. It is the only claim in this paragraph that receives support from another claim. Why should we believe that biodiversity doesn't require all existing species continue to exist? Because, many ecological niches can be filled by more than one species.

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

    78% picked this

  2. There are various ecological niches

    Premise

    This matches the 3rd claim of the paragraph (there are 4 total). The main conclusion was the 2nd claim. We know this isn't a conclusion because no support is provided. The author gives us no reason why we should believe that various niches must be filled in order for there to be life on Earth.

    7% picked this

  3. The survival of life on

    Background Fact

    This matches the 1st claim of the paragraph (there are 4 total). The main conclusion was the 2nd claim. We know this isn't a conclusion because no support is provided. The author gives us no reason to think that the survival of life depends upon biodiversity. We can rest assured that a conclusion would never be prefaced with concession/qualification wording like "although / despite / while".

    3% picked this

  4. There are many ecological niches

    Premise

    This matches the 4th claim of the paragraph (there are 4 total). The main conclusion was the 2nd claim. We know this isn't a conclusion because no support is provided. The author gives us no reason why we should believe that many niches can be filled by more than one species.

    9% picked this

  5. The species most indispensable for

    Unstated

    Nothing like this was said in the paragraph, so it can't be our Main Conclusion. The paragraph never talks about which species are most indispensable.

    4% picked this

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