Logical Reasoning

PT152 · S1 · Q5 Many fictional works have characters

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Many fictional works have characters who are supposedly precognitive—that is, able to accurately perceive future events.

Conclusion

The plots of these books show that these characters are not precognitive.

Evidence

Precognitive means "able to accurately perceive future events", and accurately perceiving future events means "your prediction comes to pass", but some of the supposed precog's predictions do not come to pass.

Evaluate

Given That some of their predictions don't come to pass, How Can We Still Argue they are correctly portrayed as precognitive?

Maybe we could say that 90% of the time they're right? If someone were able to predict the future accurately 90% of the time, the fact that they were sometimes wrong wouldn't keep me from saying, "That fool has some precognition."

Goal

Look for an answer suggesting, , or something like .

5.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

  1. Correct

    A character is truly precognitive

    Why this is right

    Since this answer is conditional ("only if" = necessary), we can put it into conditional logic and ask ourselves whether it matches a move the author made. Truly precognitive → all perceptions accurate Since the conclusion was "not truly precognitive", we should contrapose this answer. some perceptions → not truly not accurate precognitive Does that match our author's logic? Yes, that's exactly the move she made from premise to conclusion. The art / skill in seeing this answer choice for what it is resides in knowing your conditional words (only if), knowing how to contrapose, and knowing that you always want conditional rules to match up Premise → Conclusion.

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

    87% picked this

  2. It is impossible for someone

    Too Strong: impossible

    The author's argument is only about the characters in these fictional works. She doesn't take any stance on whether precognition is ever possible in real life.

    1% picked this

  3. The plots of fictional works

    Out of Scope: do not specify

    The author didn't discuss any cases in which we never find out whether or not someone's predictions came to pass. Since the author never talked about this, she doesn't need to assume anything about it. Her argument is only concerned with cases in which we do find out whether future events predicted have come to pass (we find out they haven't past, calling into question that character's precognition skills).

    8% picked this

  4. When fictional works portray characters

    Too Strong/Specific: generally central

    It doesn't matter to the author's argument whether these "fake" clairvoyants are central characters or minor characters, whether their predictions are major events or minor events in the plot.

    3% picked this

  5. No work of fiction has

    Too Strong: no work ever

    The author's conclusion is merely "the plots of these works often show characters who aren't truly precognitive". She doesn't have to assume 'truly precognitive' never happens.

    1% picked this

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