PT149 · S3 · Q2 Domestication of animals

This answer alludes to the #1 famous flaw Necessary vs. Sufficient, in which the author presents a conditional relationship as a premise, and then the author ultimately reaches her conclusion by using that relationship in some backwards or inverted fashion. Do we have a conditional premise? Is there something identified as "necessary for the development of a phenomenon?" Sure, a sophisticated means of communication is required for cooperative activities ... so, I guess we could say it's required for the development of the phenomenon of 'cooperative activities'? Hmm. That feels too awkward to be correct. But that is our only option. The only necessary thing discussed in the argument is that sophisticated communication is necessary for cooperative activities. This answer is referring to "development of a phenomenon", so it's a more natural fit for matching up with the phenomenon of language, since the conclusion alludes to the development of language. But was there any trait we said was necessary for the development of language? Nope. So either way we slice it, we can't get off the ground with trying to match up the abstract wording from the answer with the specifics of the argument.

Any time the answer on Flaw begins takes for granted / presumes / fails to establish, the answer is claiming that the author needed to assume the idea that follows. If this were a Necessary Assumption question, would we say this author just committed to the idea that "every phenomenon has a unique cause"? Definitely not. That is way too extreme a claim for anyone to believe. Sometimes multiple phenomena have the same cause: the phenomena of Leon blushing and David smiling were both caused by Emilia walking out of the coffee shop and blowing a kiss in their direction. Our author doesn't have any problem with that type of situation. She doesn't need to assume that sort of thing never happens.

Any time a Flaw answer choice describes a 2-part reasoning move, such as ... confuses X with Y infers Y on the basis of X takes for granted that Y because X concludes, from the claim that X, that Y ... we check to see whether the evidence part (X) matches the evidence, and whether the conclusion part (Y) matches the author's conclusion, or an assumption she made en route to the conclusion. Here, we're asking ourselves, "Did the author conclude that the development of one phenomenon caused the development of another?" Kind of, but it's a stretch. We could say that the author is concluding that the desire to domesticate animals caused the development of language. Okay, does the evidence say that these two phenomena (domesticating animals + language) developed around the same time? No, it does not. We never hear that domestication of animals and language developed around the same time. This answer is teasing the famous Causal flaw, in which authors commonly assume that just because two things coincide, that one causes the other. Our objection here was more like, "Just because language fulfilled a need that X had doesn't prove that language developed primarily because of X".

This answer describes the famous Circular Reasoning flaw, which is almost never a correct answer. Circular arguments are weird; the evidence restates the conclusion or assumes the truth of the conclusion. The conclusion here is that "language developed primarily to facilitate animal domestication". Is there a premise that says or assumes "language developed primarily to facilitate animal domestication"? Nope. Language and animal domestication never even appear in the same sentence together, within the premises.