Logical Reasoning

PT154 · S4 · Q17 Advice columnist: Parents should not encourage

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Advice columnist: Parents should not encourage their children to place great value on outdoing others.

Conclusion (should = opinion)

Parents should not encourage their kids to try to outdo others.

Evidence

Trying to outdo others fosters resentment, and it makes you less happy by leading you to pursue a goal that's hard to achieve.

Evaluate

Most correct answers on Strengthen + Principle are conditional rules, in which the trigger applies to the Evidence and the outcome sounds like our Conclusion.

Both the evidence and the conclusion here were about "trying to outdo others".

We need our answer to help us prove that Parents should not encourage this.

The evidence told us a few things about "trying to outdo others": - it fosters resentment - it makes us less happy - it gives us a goal to chase that is hard to achieve

Goal

We want an answer with a trigger that applies to any subset of those three things we know about "trying to outdo others", and a right side that sounds like "parents should not encourage this".

Since the correct answers are usually conditional logic statements, we want to be thinking that the correct answer may need to be contraposed in order to look like the argument. Similarly, there might be "right ideas, wrong order" like an Illegal Negation or Reversal of the argument.

17.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning in the advice columnist's argument?

  1. Parents should encourage their children

    Trap

    Bad Conclusion Match Out of Scope: things they do well This is a rule that would help us prove what parents should encourage, but we need a rule about what parents shouldn't encourage.

    6% picked this

  2. Parents should try to ensure

    Trap

    Bad Conclusion Match Out of Scope: easy to satisfy This is a rule that would help us prove what parents should encourage, but we need a rule about what parents shouldn't encourage.

    10% picked this

  3. Correct

    One should never encourage a

    Why this is right

    This is a conditional (if = left side) that looks like this: Having a trait would make ? we should not person X less happy encourage X to acquire that trait This is definitely a rule with an outcome that matches our conclusion (should not encourage). We're trying to say that parents should not encourage their kids to try to place great value on outdoing others. We're told that when you have that trait -- when you're motivated greatly to outdo others -- it makes you less happy. This answer choice is a rule whose trigger applies to "trying to outdo others" and whose outcome says "we should not encourage", just like our conclusion did. Not all correct answers line up like this, but most of them do. (note: some people are unnerved when the trigger only refers to part of the evidence. How come it didn't mention fostering resentment or hard to achieve desire? It doesn't have any obligation to talk about everything the evidence discussed. We're just trying to pick an answer that helps us support/prove the conclusion. If we're trying to prove that Billy is X, and we know that Billy is A, B, and C, then a rule like "if you're B, then you're X" suffices for us to prove that Billy is X.)

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

    78% picked this

  4. Parents should do everything they

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This is a rule that would help us prove what parents should encourage, but we need a rule about what parents shouldn't encourage.

    0% picked this

  5. How much one achieves relative

    Bad Conclusion Match

    We need a rule about what parents shouldn't encourage, and this doesn't have any language in it resembling that.

    6% picked this

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