Logical Reasoning

PT149 · S3 · Q6 Forestry official: Many people think

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Forestry official: Many people think that if forest fires are not extinguished as quickly as possible, the Forestry Department is not doing its job properly.

Conclusion (Therefore)

It's best to let small fires burn.

Evidence

Relatively frequent, small fires clear out small trees and forest debris, which, if allowed to accumulate, would create the conditions for large, devastating fires.

Evaluate

When we read the arguments on a Main Conclusion or Role question, we know that 90% of the time the conclusion will be the First Sentence or some Rebuttal / Pivot idea.

But here we have the leftover 10% where they just put the conclusion in the final claim and even announce it with a conclusion indicator, Therefore.

This argument is still a Rebuttal, so there's also an implicit conclusion going against the original position.

Implicit Rebuttal Conclusion The Forestry Dept is doing its job properly sometimes when they don't extinguish a forest fire as soon as possible. why is that? Because it's best to let small fires burn. why is that? Because frequently small fires just clear out debris and make large, devastating fires less likely.

Goal

We're being asked about that second to last sentence, which is the author's premise, supporting the conclusion that "it's best to let small fires burn" (which then supports the implicit the conclusion that the Forestry Department may be doing its job properly even if it doesn't put out a forest fire as soon as possible).

6.

The statement that relatively frequent, small fires clear out small trees and forest debris plays which one of the following roles in the official's argument?

  1. It is offered as support

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This answer correctly labels the role of our claim as support, but it's directly supporting the idea that "it's best to let small fires burn" and indirectly supporting the idea that "the Forestry Dept. is doing its job properly".

    3% picked this

  2. Correct

    It is used as evidence

    Why this is right

    This answer correctly labels the role of our claim as evidence, and it tests our understanding of the implicit rebuttal conclusion the whole argument is directed towards. Our claim directly supports the conclusion that "it's best to let small fires burn", which is rebutting the idea that "if the Forestry Department doesn't put out forest fires as quickly as possible, then it's not doing its job properly".

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

    90% picked this

  3. It is used to show

    Out of Scope: most

    We could get into a more complicated and nuanced objection to this answer, based on the fact that the author's goal in telling us about what small fires do is just to demonstrate that it's proper policy to let small fires burn. She isn't trying to rub out faces in it and be like, "SEE what you did? THIS is what happens when you let the Forestry Department go off the public's ideas of how things should work." But the quicker, easier way to know this answer is wrong is that we never even talked about ideas most people have about how the Department should do its job. The first sentence just says, "Many people think .." Many is an unspecific quantity that we can think of as "at least 5". Most is very specific, because it means more than 50% of the population.

    6% picked this

  4. It is an example used

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: most Illustrate vs. Counter Again, our quickest way to disqualify this answer is to just see "most people believe" and remind ourselves that the argument never talked about what most people believe. On a deeper level, our claim wasn't trying to illustrate the fact that most people believe something. It was trying to counter the thing that "many people" believe in the first sentence.

    1% picked this

  5. It is a conclusion based

    Wrong Role

    We're looking for premise, not conclusion. Our claim is not supported by the final claim. The Therefore keyword would never allow that. You can't possibly have Claim 2. Therefore, Claim 3 and say that 2 is a conclusion based on 3. That keyword instructs us that in the author's mind, 3 is a conclusion based on 2.

    1% picked this

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