Logical Reasoning

PT154 · S4 · Q9 Martin: I have heard it argued

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Martin: I have heard it argued that, because changes in diet and exercise rarely result in weight loss, doctors should stop advising their patients to eat less and exercise more.

Conclusion

Even if doctors' advising their patients to change diet/exercise rarely results in weight loss, that's no reason for doctors to abandon giving that advice.

Evidence

Changes in diet/exercise can have other beneficial effects.

Evaluate

It's not really clear from the text whether people went to their doctors and said, "What do you suggest for weight loss?" and then the doctors suggested diet/exercise changes, even though they rarely work as a solution.

It's presented more as though doctors just advocate changes in diet and exercise, and we aren't sure what their motivation for doing so was.

Had it been specifically advice for weight loss, then I'd probably anticipate a principle like,

Goal

Since we don't know whether the doctors were giving bad weight loss advice, we should probably just keep our principle free of that language and just describe what we were told:

Just because Action Y usually fails to do Thing A doesn't mean we should stop suggesting it. After all, it does good things other than Thing A.

9.

Which one of the following conforms most closely to the principle illustrated in Martin's position?

  1. The fact that only one

    Bad Conclusion/Premise Match

    The premise and conclusion both should be causal claims: Just because X doesn't do A doesn't mean we shouldn't suggest X. After all, doing X brings about other good things. These ideas sound more like descriptive / statistical facts, not causal claims.

    2% picked this

  2. Correct

    The fact that the engineers

    Why this is right

    The original argument was saying, The fact that [diet / exercise] usually can not solve the problem of [weight loss] is no reason to deem that behavior change a bad idea, since that behavior change nonetheless has other beneficial effects. This answer choice is saying, The fact that [engineer's work] could not solve the problem is no reason to deem their work bad work, since their work nonetheless had other beneficial effects. It's definitely not identical structurally, but they both play off the same principle of, "let's not be sour on X. Even though it didn't do A, it managed to some other good thing!"

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

    93% picked this

  3. The fact that Chester was

    Bad Premise Match

    To match the original, we want to be saying, "Even though your action didn't achieve the intended goal, it still achieved some other positive outcome". This situation sounds like Chester's attempt at gardening didn't achieve the intended goal of growing vegetables, but there isn't a premise saying "but it did achieve this other positive outcome". Instead, it's just saying, "Probably one day the action will achieve the intended outcome". That would be like if the original argument had said, "If doctors keep giving this advice, they'll generally help someone lose weight eventually."

    1% picked this

  4. The fact that the construction

    Weak Conclusion Match Bad Premise Match

    The conclusion isn't exactly a causal scenario. It's saying that something is costing more than expected, not that something failed to do its intended goal. And the premise isn't pointing out that there was some secondary benefit that was achieved. It's just pointing out that whatever bad thing we're currently observing was something that was expected.

    0% picked this

  5. The fact that the company’s

    Bad Conclusion Match

    The original was saying, "Just because an action [saying "change your diet / exercise"] doesn't result in the intended outcome [weight loss], that doesn't mean the action was bad, because the action has some other beneficial effect." This is fairly close, because the premise is saying "the action has some beneficial effect" (the charity is laudable in itself. But the conclusion doesn't have an action that failed to achieve its intended outcome. It's saying "Just because we have an ulterior motive for our action doesn't mean our action is bad. After all, our action is still having a beneficial effect."

    3% picked this

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