Logical Reasoning

PT16 · S2 · Q24 The role of the Uplandian supreme court

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The role of the Uplandian supreme court is to protect all human rights against abuses of government power.

Conclusion

It cannot be true that the role of the Uplandian supreme court is to protect all human rights against abuses of government power.

Intermediate Conclusion

The supreme court has to sometimes resort to principles outside the constitution.

Evidence (since)

The constitution isn't explicit about all human rights.

The role of the court is to protect all human rights.

Intermediate Conclusion (therefore)

Nothing but the explicit provisions of the constitution can be used to justify court decisions.

Evidence

If the supreme court weren't bound to adhere to the constitution, then human rights would be subject to the whims of the current justices.

Evidence (since)

It's contradictory to say and to say .

24.

The reasoning that leads to the conclusion that the first sentence in the passage is false is flawed because the argument

  1. ignores data that offer reasonable

    Bad Description

    There's no data offered in support of the first sentence, so we can't say the author is ignoring it. The author does not present any example. These are all general claims.

    10% picked this

  2. seeks to defend a view

    Inappropriate Appeals

    The idea of arguing that a claim is true because it's widely held is the famous Inappropriate Appeal to Opinion flaw. No premise ever touts that some view is widely held, nor does any premise ever say that decisions based on a view are often correct.

    5% picked this

  3. rejects a claim as false

    Bad Description

    The argument does not raise self-interest as a reason to reject any claim. There is no mention of who benefits from holding which view. This answer describes an Ad Hominem flaw.

    3% picked this

  4. makes an unwarranted assumption that

    Part vs. Whole

    This describes a part to whole flaw. The only group we're talking about would be the supreme court, but there isn't any premise about "what is true of each member of the supreme court".

    11% picked this

  5. Correct

    concludes that a particular premise

    Why this is right

    Ugh, what? This seems like our best answer, since it seems to have a better chance of matching than these other answers that had ingredients with no potential match. But god this is weird. Okay, is the author concluding that a premise is false? Well, she's concluding that it's false to say that "the supreme court's role is to protect against human rights abuses". Was that a premise? It felt weird to call it a premise, since the author's argument is directed at saying that claim isn't true. But if we look at these mini-arguments that lead to intermediate conclusions, we could call it a premise of the mini-argument that happens in the first two sentences. P1: court's role is to protect against abuses of all human rights P2: constitution isn't explicit about all human rights IC: the court must use principles outside of the constitution Could we theoretically say P1 is true but P2 (another premise) is false? Sure, I guess. If we did say P2 was false, then the constitution is explicit about all human rights, and so we wouldn't need to accept the Intermediate Conclusion that the court must use principles outside the constitution. If we don't have that Intermediate Conclusion, then we have no contradiction, so the rest of the author's argument would basically unwind. Ultimately, what this answer is getting at is this: hey author, you built these two mini-arguments that contradicted each other. you knew that something had to be wrong, because you had arrived at a contradiction. but then you arbitrarily picked this one premise as the poison pill, when it's possible that one of your other premises was wrong and that's why you arrived at a contradiction. This is a super weird argument / answer, not like any I've seen before. The closest comp would be a flaw answer that is saying, "it arbitrarily chooses to resolve the impasse THIS way, when it's possible to resolve it SOME OTHER way". But I would be willing to write this one off as an outlier you don't need to worry about.

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

    72% picked this

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