Editorial: It is common to find essays

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct87% picked this

   The editorial dismisses a claim without considering any reasons presented in arguments

   Why this is right

   Does the author dismiss a claim? Yes, she dismisses the claim that our nation is in decline, saying there's no problem with the actual condition of the nation. Does the author fail to consider any reasons presented in support of that claim? Yes, she doesn't respond to any of the arguments that seem to show that our nation is in decline. She just says, "Ahhh, don't listen to them. They're just anxious people." This is basically a version of the famous Ad Hominem flaw, because the argument is dismissing a view by talking about the source of the view rather than by engaging with the content of the ideas.

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

   87%
2. B

   Out of Scope: two situations3% picked this

   The editorial compares two situations without considering the obvious differences

   Does the author compare two situations? Nope. There's an essay. The essay describes a situation. The author says, "Don't worry. That situation ain't true. The writer is just anxious." This answer sounds like it's describing a Flawed Comparison, like the argument tried to argue by analogy but failed to consider a crucial difference.

   3%
3. C

   Out of Scope: cultural vs. political0% picked this

   The editorial confuses claims about a cultural decline with claims about

   When we see flaw answers structured like, confuses X with Y mistakes X for Y they are only correct if X is what we were talking about in the evidence (or what we could correctly infer from the evidence) while Y is what the author is talking about in the conclusion. So we would ask ourselves here, "Did this author go from talking about a cultural decline to talking about a political decline?" Definitely not. The argument just talks about the nation being in decline. It never gets specific about whether we mean cultural, economic, political, social decline, etc.

   0%
4. D

   Not an Objection1% picked this

   The editorial overlooks the possibility that the nation is neither thriving

   When an answer begins with fails to consider / overlooks the possibility, then we can ask ourselves whether the idea that follows would Weaken. Would it hurt this author if we said, "Yo, author -- the nation is neither thriving nor in decline. They're just doing kinda okay"? Nope. Doesn't hurt the author. She was never arguing that the nation is thriving. She was just arguing that the nation isn't in decline. This answer choice seems to describe an argument that committed a False Choice flaw, where the author failed to perceive a middle ground between two extremes (thriving vs. in decline).

   1%
5. E

   Not Self-Contradiction9% picked this

   The editorial dismisses a particular view while offering evidence that actually

   This describes one of the 10 Famous Flaws, Self-Contradiction, in which the author says something early on that undermines/contradicts something they say later. This answer is almost never correct Our author did indeed dismiss a particular view (the view in these common essays). But she never offered evidence that supports the idea that the nation is in decline.

   9%