Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S3 · Q12 Humans' emotional tendencies are

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Humans' emotional tendencies are essentially unchanged from those of the earliest members of our species.

Conclusion

Humans are generally unable to choose more wisely now than they could centuries ago.

Evidence

Humans' emotional tendencies are essentially unchanged, from how we were in the early days of our species.

Evaluate

The "accordingly" tips us off that the last claim is the Conclusion. The "although" tells us that the first half of that claim is concession that isn't part of the core argument.

So the author is basically just making this move:

if emotional tendencies then we're unable to haven't changed, choose more wisely

Another way to say that?

Choosing more wisely would necessitate a change in emotional tendencies.

A weaker way to touch on that?

Emotional tendencies are relevant to how wisely we can make choices

Goal

Look for an answer providing this missing link between "emotional tendencies" and "ability to choose more wisely", or look for an answer ruling out an objection that would allow someone to argue that humans are generally able to choose more wisely these days.

f.e.

12.

The argument depends on assuming which one of the following?

Humans have undergone no significant
Too Strong: no significant changes
Just because our emotional tendencies haven't changed doesn't mean the author is assuming NOTHING has changed.
6% picked this
Humans who make wise choices
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: in control of emotions We never discuss being "in control" of our emotions. The author isn't revealing her opinion on how wise we were, or how wise we are. She's just saying, "since emotional tendencies haven't changed, ability to choose wisely hasn't changed".
9% picked this
Human history cannot make humans
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: disposed to heed lessons Nothing in this argument is talking about whether or not humans have the emotional disposition to take to heart the lessons of history. We aren't talking about learning from history's lessons at all.
3% picked this
Regardless of the range of
Too Strong: choose on emotions alone
The author has not committed herself to this crazy-extreme idea that every human chooses on the basis of emotions alone. She's just saying "whatever influence/tendencies emotions had for early humans is similar to what they have today", and then concluding "our ability to choose wisely must have stayed the same". All this assumes is that "ability to make wise choices is affected by / dependent on our emotional tendencies in some way". It doesn't assume that all humans make every decision based only on emotions.
26% picked this
Correct
Humans would now be able
Why this is right
When Necessary Assumption answers are in conditional form, we can just diagram them and figure out whether they match the argument core: only if = right side Humans able to make → essential change took wiser choices place in emotional dispositions Since we always compare these conditionals to the argument in "IF Premise, THEN Conclusion" form, we'll need to contrapose this so that we can get the right side of the arrow to be talking about whether humans are able to make wiser choices (since that was the Conclusion.) Contrapositive: no essential change humans won't be able to humans' emotional → to make wiser choices dispositions than in centuries past Does that match the argument? Yes, perfectly! The left side matches the premise, and the right side matches the conclusion.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
56% picked this

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