Logical Reasoning

PT149 · S3 · Q18 Herbalist: Many herbal medicines work

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Herbalist: Many herbal medicines work best when they have a chance to influence the body gently over several months.

Conclusion (therefore)

At least some people who use herbal meds daily should occasionally skip their usual dose for a day or two, to give the body a chance to recuperate.

Evidence

Even though taking herbal meds over several months is how you get herbal meds to work best, many herbal meds have toxic side effects when taken daily for long periods.

Evaluate

The author's conclusion is making a recommendation, which is inherently Comparative. When we recommend some approach or tactic, we're assuming the world in which you follow our recommendation will be better than the present world.

We can use our Plan / Goal thinking to analyze this argument. The author's Goal is that we harness the value of herbal meds without incurring the toxic downside. The author's Plan is for us to skip a usual dose for a day or two.

When authors suggest Plans to achieve a certain Goal, we're typically worried that the Plan isn't feasible, won't work as they're envisioning, or that it will backfire by having some unanticipated consequence.

Goal

This author seems to assume that "skipping a dose for a day or two" is enough time to "avoid the toxic side effects" of long term herbal med usage (she's assuming that her Plan would actually help with the Goal).

But she also has to assume that skipping a usual dose for a day or two would not result in some bad backfire consequence that's at least as bad as the toxic side effects would have been.

Maybe, once you've gotten your body acclimated to a certain daily dose of herbal meds, it has a bad reaction when you don't have that substance (like how regular coffee drinkers get bad headaches if they don't have their daily caffeine).

18.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the herbalist's argument?

  1. Correct

    At least some people who

    Why this is right

    This was not an answer I saw coming, but because it's so weakly worded (at least some), it's tempting. When we negate weak wording we get a strong idea: No one who uses herbal meds daily uses them for long enough to have side effects. Does that weaken the argument? Heck yeah! If no one uses them long enough to have the toxic side effects, then there's not even a Problem that needs solving, so the author's advice to "skip a dose for a day or two" is completely pointless. On Necessary Assumption, if negating an answer choice turns that answer into a big objection, then it's the correct answer.

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

    77% picked this

  2. At least some herbal medicines

    Weakens

    There's no reason we can say the author needs to believe this, when this idea actually presents a downside to following her advice. According to this, if you follow the author's advice, you'll be making your herbal meds work less well. We don't know one way or the other what the author would say about this issue, but it's more conservative to think she's hoping that by only skipping a dose for a day or two, you're still getting the same benefit, just without the toxic side effect harm.

    3% picked this

  3. Some herbal medicines have toxic

    Weakens

    There's no reason we can say the author needs to believe this, when this idea actually makes it seem like her recommendation wouldn't succeed, for some herbal meds. According to this, if you follow the author's advice, you might not be spared the toxic side effects, because for some herbal meds, you get those side effects even if you follow the author's advice of sporadically skipping a dose.

    2% picked this

  4. Anyone who uses herbal medicines

    Unrelated to Goal Too Strong: anyone

    This answer has nothing to do with the author's conclusion, which is about skipping doses intermittently, if you're already taking herbal meds daily. This answer makes a very bold claim "every single person who uses herbal meds should give them a chance to influence the body over at least several months". The first sentence, which was not part of the argument, is where people would find some support for this notion. But just because the author said, "many herbal meds work best when absorbed gently over several months", that doesn't mean she holds the position that "every single person who uses any herbal med should use it for several months".

    2% picked this

  5. One should occasionally skip one’s

    Reversed Logic

    "Only if" is a necessary indicator meaning that any idea that follows "only if" should go on the right of the arrow. So this answer looks like this Should occasionally skip → reduce / eliminate usual dose for a day or two toxic side effects But this doesn't match the move from Premise to Conclusion. It's reversed. The author was arguing Since ... Therefore ... long term use comes should occasionally with toxic side effects skip a dose for a we'd want to reduce day or two or eliminate

    16% picked this

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