Logical Reasoning

PT149 · S3 · Q4 Editorial: It is common to find essays

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Editorial: It is common to find essays offering arguments that seem to show that our nation is in decline.

Main Conclusion

There's no cause for alarm that our nation is in decline.

Intermediate Conclusion (this shows that)

The anxious tone of the essays is due to the psychological state of the writers, not the actual condition of the nation.

Evidence

There are essays that seem to show that our nation is in decline.

Evaluate

This should strike us as a pretty weird argument. People have written essays offering arguments that seem to show that our nation is in decline.

This author is saying, 'We don't need to worry about these essays. There's nothing wrong with our nation. These essays sound alarmist just because the writers are psychologically disturbed."

Where's your evidence for that buddy? Why should we just believe that these writers are overly pessimistic alarmists? You're just asking us to take your word for it?

Goal

Let's look for an answer complaining that this is a totally unfair way to dismiss an argument.

If I write an essay showing that our environment is in decline because of global warming, citing the massive loss of over 50% of species, and describing the tens of millions of climate refugees we'll have when the oceans rise a foot or two, can this guy just say, ? Of course not.

Which one of the following most accurately describes a flaw in the editorial’s reasoning?

Correct
The editorial dismisses a claim
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.
86% picked this
The editorial compares two situations
Out of Scope: two situations
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% picked this
The editorial confuses claims about
Out of Scope: cultural vs. political
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% picked this
The editorial overlooks the possibility
Not an Objection
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% picked this
The editorial dismisses a particular
Not Self-Contradiction
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% picked this

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