Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S2 · Q21 A local marsh would need

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A local marsh would need to be drained before the proposed office complex could be built.

Conclusion

The city should block the proposed office complex until they've done an environmental assessment of the marsh's role in maintaining the quality of the city's well water.

Evidence

The local marsh would need to be drained in order to build the proposed office complex, and marshes often play a crucial role in purifying groundwater.

Evaluate

We want a conclusion that isn't totally negative, just provisionally negative. The argument should be saying,

Goal

Look for an answer containing ingredients something like this: - we're considering an action - the action involves tampering with a potentially crucial thing - thus, let's not take the action until we've better assessed whether this action is going to tamper with the crucial thing.

21.

The principle underlying the argument above is most similar to the principle underlying which one of the following arguments?

  1. A new highway cannot be

    Bad Conclusion Match

    If we skip straight to the conclusion, we can avoid reading this one, since its conclusion is definitively negative, not provisionally negative. We would need a conclusion like "the proposal for the new highway should be rejected until we ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽ ."

    6% picked this

  2. Correct

    Defective products can cost an

    Why this is right

    This one doesn't quite match the ingredients we pre-phrased, but we could tweak our model of the original argument to make this work. The original argument was saying, "If you build that office complex, you might mess up your city's drinking water (by removing the marsh) and we haven't done an investigation yet to look into that. So don't build it until you've conducted that investigation." This argument is saying, "If we bring our products to market and they're defective, it might cost us millions of dollars because of recalls and lawsuits. We haven't done an investigation yet of whether they're defective. So let's not bring the products to market until we've done that investigation." This is definitely requiring some flexible rephrasing of the original argument, and some charitable interpretation of ingredients to make them line up, but it's ultimately the best match we've got.

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

    72% picked this

  3. A laboratory safety check of

    Weak Premise Match

    The conclusion is correctly provisionally negative (not at this time). Does the evidence establish that there's a potential danger that we haven't investigated yet? A little bit, but a sloppier match than the correct answer. We haven't identified a precise fear (like contaminated groundwater, or millions of dollars in recalls and lawsuits). We've just said "safety testing", so we would be inferring that the fear is some sort of safety problem. But since this argument doesn't define that specific worry, it is less like the original argument than the correct answer is. And the testing here is just incomplete, not nonexistent. We're already halfway through the week of testing, so we're really just talking about delaying the report for a few more days. In the original and the correct answer, we're saying we haven't yet done (or started) the deep study of the potential problem, and so the conclusion is postponing an action indefinitely, until that's completed. There's also not really an action being considered (like building an office complex or bringing a new product line to market) that would result in potential harm. We're just looking at an object (the portable grill) that could result in harm.

    18% picked this

  4. Building the new highway along

    Bad Premise / Conclusion Match

    If we peek at the conclusion then this is a non-starter, since the conclusion is a conditional statement that talks about what we should do. The evidence also doesn't match. Instead of talking about a potential threat that we haven't adequately investigated, it's talking about a definite threat.

    3% picked this

  5. Building a light rail line

    Bad Conclusion Match

    If we check out this conclusion first, we won't need to read this one. It's concluding that an action should be taken.

    1% picked this

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