Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S2 · Q23 Environmentalist: Efforts to attain

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Environmentalist: Efforts to attain an overall reduction in carbon use by convincing people to focus on their personal use of fossil fuels cannot achieve that goal.

Conclusion

Convincing people to focus on their personal use of fossil fuels cannot achieve an overall reduction in carbon use.

Evidence

Even if most people changed their personal use, it wouldn't produce a reduction on the scale we need. Only government policies can produce change on that scale.

Evaluate

Given that "only government policies can produce big enough change", how could we argue that ?

Well, the nitpicky objection would be that if the goal is literally just a reduction in carbon use, then if most people reduce their carbon use then there will be an overall reduction. The author is saying, "Yeah, but it won't be reduced enough", but she never stipulated that the goal was . So she is assuming, somewhat nonsensically, that

But, where I would assume this is actually going is the idea that maybe having individuals change their behavior could trigger governments changing their policies. After all, the government is made up of individuals. Maybe if the citizenry becomes more engaged in conserving carbon use, then their representatives in government will shift policies accordingly.

Goal

I would look for an answer that rules out our objection: .

23.

The environmentalist's argument requires assuming which one of the following?

Correct
Convincing most people to focus
Why this is right
Whenever we see the word "not" connected to the verb, in a Necessary Assumption answer choice, we can just negate the answer by removing the word "not" and see if it becomes an Objection. If we said, "convincing most people to focus on personal fossil fuel use would lead to their successfully pressuring the government into policy change that reduces carbon", then that would be a huge objection. We would essentially have just proven that the plan the author is rejecting would succeed at its goal. If we love formal logic, the original conclusion was Convince people to change ------------------> ~Goal and the premise was ~change ---> ~Goal to government policy so the missing idea is Convince people --> ~change to change to government policy
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
81% picked this
The calculations needed to determine
Out of Scope: calculations too difficult
The author doesn't need to assume anything about personal calculations. Even if individuals are capable of calculating how to best minimize their personal use of fossil fuels, the author's premise still remains that "who care what individuals do? It's only change on a governmental scale that will have much impact".
4% picked this
Efforts to convince people to
Too Strong: only
The author isn't committed to thinking that 100% of people who are trying to convince people to change their personal fossil fuel habits are removed from framing government policy. If we negate this, we get "at least one person who has been trying to convince people to reduce their use of fossil fuels is currently involved in framing government policy". Is that a big objection to the argument? No. It's a very, very tiny objection. It starts to move in the direction that (A) does, when negated: what if personal changes lead to government changes? But it doesn't get us anywhere near the strength of negating (A), in which we learn that "personal changes will lead to successful changing of govt policy". If an answer choices is phrased very strongly, then negating it always gives a very weak idea. That's one way to explain why we have a general aversion to strong language in Necessary Assumption answers.
7% picked this
It is easier to convince
Out of Scope: easier
The author isn't digging her heels into a comparison between which is easier. She's simply making an anti-causal claim that doing X won't lead to Y, because only Z can lead to Y. Making such a claim doesn't presume that doing X is easier than doing Z. They could be equally hard or Z could be harder. It wouldn't make any difference to the logic of "doing X won't lead to Y, because only Z can lead to Y". The author is just assuming that "doing X won't lead to Z".
6% picked this
People who are concerned about
Out of Scope: concern / support Weakens
The author never talked about people who are / aren't concerned with the environment. This answer is just inviting people to make their own assumptions ("if someone is going to reduce their fossil fuel usage, they must be concerned about the environment?"). The author also never discussed supporting / not supporting political candidates. This is just loosely associated with the concept of whether or not the government will change policies regarding fossil fuel usage. We could easily kill this answer because of all the out of scope stuff it's talking about, but even if we played along with those term shifts, this idea would actually weaken, if anything. It starts to make it seem like people who reduce personal fossil fuel (concerned w/ environment) would support political candidates who would then change government policy (support environmental issues).
1% picked this

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