Logical Reasoning

PT149 · S1 · Q12 Legislator: the recently passed highway bill

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Legislator: The recently passed highway bill is clearly very unpopular with voters.

Conclusion (clearly)

The recently passed highway bill is very unpopular with voters.

Evidence (after all)

Poll predict that the majority party, which supported the bill's passage, will lose more than a dozen seats in the upcoming election.

Evaluate

The author is concluding a causal hypothesis for a Curious Fact: why is the majority party expected to lose more than a dozen seats in the upcoming election?

He is positing this Explanation: the majority party supported the highway bill's passage, people don't like this bill, they blame the majority party, and they plan to vote out people belonging to the majority party as electoral punishment for this bad bill.

Whenever author's are trying to Explain a Curious Fact, we look at two different pressure points: 1. Could there be some Alternate Explanation for why the majority party is expected to lose more than a dozen seats? (maybe there was a census and after re-districting, there aren't as many voting districts that favor that party / maybe the majority party started an unpopular war or caused a recession or botched a pandemic response)

2. How plausible is the Author's Explanation? (did anyone ever express displeasure with the highway bill? are voters aware of it? do voters blame the majority party for it, or was it a bi-partisan measure supported by both parties?)

Goal

Usually Flaw is much more concerned with the potential for Alternate Explanations. The essence of the famous Causal flaw is that an author is simply too sure of his causal explanation, when other causal explanations could potentially exist.

12.

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

  1. Correct

    gives no reason to think

    Why this is right

    It's true that the author provides to reason to think the majority party wouldn't be losing so many seats if it hadn't supported the highway bill. But does that speak to a logical problem with the argument? Yes! It speaks to the Causal flaw. Why should we believe this causal storyline the author invented, in which we should blame the loss of seats in the upcoming election on the highway bill? Who said that the highway bill is the causal difference-maker that's responsible for the predicted election outcome? Couldn't there be other reasons? The author hasn't given us any compelling reason to believe his explanation is plausible. He is concluding that this highway bill is unpopular, and his only premises are that the majority party supported the bill and will lose seats in the upcoming election. He's clearly assuming that these two things are related. And this answer is just saying, "He's assuming these two things are related", which is accurate. If the election outcome would be the same whether or not the majority party supported the highway bill, then those two things are not related.

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

    71% picked this

  2. focuses on the popularity of

    Out of Scope Objection

    We can't say, "Hey, author -- you're focusing on popularity, when you should be thinking about the merits of the bill as well." He would just say, "I'm not arguing that the bill is good or bad, so I don't need to talk about its merits. I'm only arguing that it's unpopular with voters, so it makes sense for my evidence to only care about the bill's popularity."

    4% picked this

  3. infers that the bill is

    Wrong Flaw

    Wrong Flaw: Not Circular Bad Evidence Match This answer refers to the famous Circular reasoning flaw, in which the evidence is a restatement of the conclusion or assumes the truth of the conclusion. Circular reasoning answers are wrong at least 95% of the time we see them. But if we don't know that, we can examine this answer by doing what we always do when we see "infers X from a claim that Y". We can ask ourselves whether X matches with the Conclusion/Assumption and whether Y matches the evidence. This argument does infer that a bill is unpopular. That matches the Conclusion. But is the evidence a claim that presupposes unpopularity? In order to claim "the majority party supported Bill X", do we have to presuppose that "Bill X is unpopular"? No. In order to claim "the majority party is expected to lose more than a dozen seats", do we have to presuppose that "Bill X is unpopular"? No.

    23% picked this

  4. takes for granted that the

    Bad Evidence Match

    If an answer says that an author "takes for granted that X because Y", we can ask ourselves whether X matches the Conclusion/Assumption and whether Y matches the evidence. The author certainly concludes/assumes that the bill is unpopular. Do we have a premise that says, "The legislator wishes it to be unpopular"? Nope. We have a premise that says the majority party supported the bill and a premise saying the majority party is expected to lose more than a dozen seats.

    1% picked this

  5. bases its conclusion on the

    Bad Evidence Match

    This says that the conclusion is based on views of voters. Was the evidence of this argument telling us about the views of voters? Not at all. It told us that the majority party supported the highway bill and that the majority party is expected to lose seats in the upcoming election. The conclusion itself is about the views of voters, not the basis for the conclusion.

    2% picked this

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