Logical Reasoning

PT152 · S1 · Q25 Stallworth claims that she supported the proposal

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Stallworth claims that she supported the proposal to build a new community center.

Evidence

S claims she supported the proposal. H also claims he supported the proposal. If they both supported it, it would have received approval. It didn't receive approval.

Conclusion

H did not support the proposal.

Evaluate

We could see this as providing a conditional premise with an AND in the trigger: S supports and H supports → approved

A premise fact that triggers the contrapositive: ~Approved. (Thus, ~S support or ~H support)

And then a conclusion that arbitrarily picks one of those options, failing to consider the other option: Thus, ~H support.

Our objection would be like,

Goal

Let's look for an argument with a conditional premise, where a fact triggers a contrapositive and creates an OR choice. Then the author arbitrarily concludes one of those two options without ruling out the other option.

Or, more loosely, look for some sort of He Said / She Said type argument, where the author arbitrarily chooses one side over the other. Both S and H claimed they supported the proposal. We know that at least one of them didn't, but how is the author capriciously choosing H as the guilty party? Couldn't it have been S?

25.

Which one of the following arguments is most similar in its flawed reasoning to the argument above?

  1. Correct

    According to the TV news,

    Why this is right

    It's easier to match this up with the He Said / She Said objection than by using the "conditional premise with an AND trigger". TV news: accident occurred on A street Morgan: saw accident from kitchen window Conditional: y'all can't both be right. If it was on A street, then M couldn't see from window. Conclusion: I'll just arbitrarily say that the newspaper was wrong. Us: Couldn't Morgan be the one who's wrong? We could interpret the original argument in that same style: S: I supported it H: I supported it Conditional: Y'all can't both be right. If you both supported it, it would have gotten approval. But it didn't. Conclusion: I'll just arbitrarily decide that H is the one who is saying something false. Us: Couldn't it be S that's saying something false? This is a really tough problem / correct answer, and a good reminder that the correct answer on Parallel Flaw will sometimes stray pretty far from matching certain structural features of the original argument. What a correct answer must do is be vulnerable to a similar objection.

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

    54% picked this

  2. According to the city government,

    Weak Premise Match

    We do have two different points of view, but we don't establish in the evidence that "they can't both be right". It's possible they're both right -- 15% are behind on taxes and taxes in this city are higher than average.

    8% picked this

  3. According to Kapoor, the hazardous-waste

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This conclusion is conditional, whereas the original one was just a declarative fact. And this conditional seems to be avoiding the essence of the original flaw. Rather than arbitrarily picking a winner in a He Said / She Said conflict, the conclusion is responsibly not committing. It's just saying, "If she's right, he's wrong".

    13% picked this

  4. According to Harris’s political rivals,

    Bad Conclusion/Premise Match

    This conclusion isn't saying "thus She's right, He's wrong". It's just offering an evaluation. There's no He Said / She Said debate in the evidence. Definitely nothing resembling the "they can't both be right" tension we need to replicate the original flaw.

    10% picked this

  5. According to the latest government

    Bad Premise Match

    We don't have any "they can't both be right" tension in the evidence. It's possible for regional unemployment to decline even while thousands of manufacturing jobs are lost. If other jobs are being created in non-manufacturing sectors, those could outweigh the jobs lost in manufacturing and allow unemployment to go down.

    15% picked this

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