Logical Reasoning

PT151 · S2 · Q25 Mayor: Periodically an ice cream company

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Mayor: Periodically an ice cream company will hold a free ice cream day as a promotion.

Conclusion

We need a system for charging people for the use of roads during rush hour.

Evidence

When something valuable (using roads during rush hour) costs no money, you get overconsumption and long lines (you can see the same thing when there are free ice cream giveaways, and people wait around the block for 45 mins to save $3). If we charged to use roads during rush hour, congestion would abate.

Evaluate

This argument winds up with an analogy, just to reach a subsidiary conclusion ( "we learn from this ..." ) that when something valuable costs no money, you get overconsumption and long lines.

Then the author pivots into her actual suggestion: what is needed.

You can almost picture this author driving her Range Rover, stuck in traffic, wishing she could pay something to keep the riff-raff away.

Goal

They're asking us about that middle sentence that could probably be called an Intermediate Conclusion. It has its own support; "we learn this" claim from the ice cream example. But it's there to support the author's Main Conclusion about charging for rush hour driving.

But on a first pass, I would just look for anything that sounds like this claim had the role of Supporting the main conclusion.

25.

The claim that when something valuable costs no money you get overconsumption and long lines plays which one of the following roles in the mayor's argument?

It is a hypothesis that
Opposite: rejected
This claim supports the conclusion, but this answer is saying we reject it en route to our conclusion.
1% picked this
It is a concession made
Not Opposing
A concession is the same as granting your opponent a point. It's not in the Support family (premise, illustration, example, subsidiary conclusion, ruling out objection). Also there's no one present disputing the analogy, so we can't match this up with anything.
2% picked this
It helps establish the importance
Wrong Role
This isn't a role I've ever seen tested as a correct answer. It seems to describe a piece of background that would set the context for the argument. For example, "Global warming is the most important problem facing humanity. We should switch to a vegetarian diet; after all, eating meat is one of the behavior that adds the most to global warming." At any rate, the claim we're being tested on was definitely offered as evidence for the conclusion that we should charge a toll for driving on the road at rush hour.
14% picked this
Correct
It is a general claim
Why this is right
It is indeed a general claim (it's phrased as a broad takeaway from the ice cream example) that serves as a principle underlying the author's suggestion. Since "not being charged for something valuable leads to overcrowding", the author thinks that "charging for rush-hour road use will lessen overcrowding".
Skill tested: Role · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
76% picked this
It is the overall conclusion
Wrong Role
The conclusion is the "What is needed is a system for charging to use the road during rush-hour", and the claim we're being asked about is the biggest supporting reason for why the author thinks we need that system.
6% picked this

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