PT154 · S2 · Q12 Bauer: It is a mistake

This one is very tempting. That first verb is perfect. Yes, yes, he's misrepresenting the original complaint - it wasn't about whether having parking regulations enforced had any intrinsic value (whether we should have them at all), it was about whether parking regulations are being enforced in a bad way (overzealously). Although we've all tried, it's pretty icky to stretch the wording of this answer choice so that "overzealous enforcement of parking regulations" is a "consequence of enforcing parking regulations". The fact that the practice of enforcing parking regulations is currently being carried out overzealously isn't a consequence of that practice. And this answer even says "the consequences", plural, so that's also icky. A logical consequence is a must be true implication of an idea. When we write conditionals, such as A ? B, we say that B is a consequence of A. The practice of enforcing parking tickets does not logically guarantee overzealous enforcement. So we can't say overzealousness is a logical consequence. A causal consequence is a result that follows from this action transpiring. A causal consequence of enforcing parking tickets would be things like - the city gets more revenue - the driver of that car gets furious and the rest of their day is crappy Overzealous parking enforcement isn't a consequence of the practice of enforcing parking. It is just one style of conducting that practice.

If a flaw answer takes the form takes for granted that X merely because Y we'll ask ourselves whether X matches the conclusion and Y matches the support (because). Did the author conclude that a certain authority should be respected? Eh. We could make it work. She concluded that it's wrong to criticize meter maids for being overzealous, so that's in the neighborhood of "respect their authority". Does the premise say something like, "after all, all authorities should be respected"? No, not at all. So we definitely can't match up the merely because it is an authority part.

If a flaw answer takes the form takes for granted that X simply because Y we'll ask ourselves whether X matches the conclusion and Y matches the support (because). Did the author conclude that "a particular practice is good"? No, she concluded that it's wrong to criticize meter maids for being overzealous. That's not close enough to keep reading. As it turns out, the premise part is miles away. The evidence never mentions "how things have been traditionally done".

This describes one response to the famous Causal flaw. This argument had no causal interpretations happening. The author wasn't trying to explain what was causing overzealous ticketing. She was just defending its existence. Note: this formulation of the Causal flaw answer is always wrong, because the answer is sure of itself. We can never definitively say that the author confused cause for effect. We can only point out the possibility that she failed to consider that possibility.