Logical Reasoning

PT144 · S2 · Q3 Doris: I've noticed that everyone

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Doris: I've noticed that everyone involved in student government is outspoken.

Doris's 1st Claim

Everyone in student government is outspoken. Does Zach say some members of student government aren't outspoken?

No he explicitly agrees with this claim.

Doris's 2nd Claim

If we want students to be more outspoken, we should encourage them to become involved in student government. Does Zach object to the idea of encouraging people to get involved in student government, as a way to get students to be more outspoken?

Yes, kind of! This conditional form that Doris used, "If you want A, you should do B" implies a causal relationship: B is a way to cause more A to happen.

Doris was thinking that getting a student to be involved in student government is a way to get students to be more outspoken. She's assuming that the reason she's noticing that everyone in student government is outspoken is because being involved in student government makes you more outspoken.

Zack is countering this assumption by offering an alternate explanation for that correlation: the outspoken nature comes first, and that's what gets them into student government.

Since he sees the causality going the other way (outspoken ⇢ involved in govt), he says that Doris's plan to get people to be more outspoken by having them join student government is not gonna work.

Goal

They disagree explicitly about this plan. Doris thinks that getting people involved in student government could make them more outspoken. Zack doesn't think that will work.

But they also disagree implicitly in terms of their causal assumptions about why there's such a strong correlation between being in student government and being outspoken.

Doris thinks it's because being in student government makes you more outspoken. Zack thinks it's because being outspoken makes you want to get into student government.

3.

Doris and Zack disagree over whether

  1. students should be more outspoken

    No Support from Either

    We couldn't derive from either paragraph that students should be more outspoken. The authors only talked about, "if you wanted to get people to be more outspoken, should you / shouldn't you do this thing."

    0% picked this

  2. students should be encouraged to

    No Support from Either

    We couldn't derive from either paragraph that students should be encouraged. Doris isn't saying students should be encouraged. She's saying, "If we want result X, then they should be encouraged". The difference between saying it conditionally and saying it factually is big. For example, "If we want to disappoint the kids attending, we should have crab cake for dessert at this party." vs. "We should have crab cake for dessert at this party"

    2% picked this

  3. Correct

    becoming involved in student government

    Why this is right

    This is the implicit causal assumption we discussed. Doris agrees with this. The plan she's recommending assumes that by getting students involved in student government, we would be making them more outspoken. Zach disagrees, saying that getting people involved in student government "would do nothing to make them more outspoken".

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

    96% picked this

  4. all students who are involved

    Agreement

    As we analyzed, Zach agrees to this first claim Doris makes.

    0% picked this

  5. students will not become more

    Too Strong: not unless

    The person who would come closer to agreeing to this is Doris, but she is only thinking of joining student government as a possible way to get students to be more outspoken. This is claiming that it's a required way to get students to be more outspoken. Doris was never saying "if we want students to be more outspoken, we have to encourage them to become involved in student government".

    2% picked this

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