Logical Reasoning

PT145 · S4 · Q9 Joshi is clearly letting campaign

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Joshi is clearly letting campaign contributions influence his vote in city council.

Conclusion

Joshi is letting campaign contributions influence his vote in city council.

Evidence

His re-election campaign has gotten the most money from property developers. And his voting record has most favored the interests of property developers.

Evaluate

When we're doing Flaw and we start to see "bias / self-interest", we probably start to think of the famous Ad Hominem flaw. But this argument is really more of a Curious Fact / Explanation style argument, that will be guilty of the famous Causal Flaw (arriving overconfidently at one possible explanation when there could be alternate explanations).

Curious Fact How come J's voting record favors property developers the most, and his campaign has gotten the most money from property developers?

Author's Explanation The property developers are contributing money to the campaign as a soft bribe for Joshi to enact their agenda via his city council votes.

Before the author "clearly" arrives at this possible explanation, he should be thinking whether there are other ways we could explain these same facts.

One alternate explanation is that the author kind of has cause and effect backwards: maybe Joshi's pro-development voting habit came first, and once property developers saw that Joshi was their kind of councilperson, they started donating to J's campaign in the hopes that J would be re-elected and keep voting in a pro-development style.

Goal

Look for an answer pointing out that the author has interpreted these campaign contributions and votes in one possible, cynical way, when there might be a more innocent explanation for them.

9.

The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

  1. takes for granted that because

    Bad Premise Match

    The author is concluding that campaign contributions caused the pro-development votes, but did her premise establish which of those things was the earlier event, which was the later? No. So the part of this answer that acts like the argument described earlier / later is what kills it.

    7% picked this

  2. confuses one thing’s being necessary

    Wrong Flaw

    This describes the famous Necessary vs. Sufficient flaw, in which an author messes up the directionality of a conditional logic statement. Did this argument have any conditional logic? Nope. So let's eliminate this.

    2% picked this

  3. makes a moral judgment when

    Out of Scope: moral judgment

    The author's conclusion is just making a causal judgment, that the campaign contributions of the property developers is influencing how Joshi votes. We can't help making a moral judgment as we read that, but the author didn't. She didn't use any normative language like "wrong, should not, unjustified, ought not to".

    2% picked this

  4. Correct

    presumes that one thing is

    Why this is right

    Does the author conclude/assume that one thing causes another? Yes, she thinks the campaign money causes the pro-development voting record. Could it easily be possible that a pro-development voting record would cause developers to fund your re-election campaign? Yes. The author's conclusion acts like what's going on is clearly the former explanation, and this answer is pointing out the objection that the latter could easily be the real explanation.

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

    87% picked this

  5. has a conclusion that is

    Wrong Flaw

    This describes the famous Circular Reasoning flaw, which is almost never the correct answer. (Learn this language as well as "presumes the truth of the conclusion") Does a premise say "Yoshi is letting contributions influence his votes"? No, only the conclusion says that.

    1% picked this

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