Logical Reasoning

PT17 · S3 · Q11 Unless the residents of Glen Hills

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Unless the residents of Glen Hills band together, the proposal to rezone that city will be approved.

Facts

conditional (unless, if)

residents rezoning city builds don't band → proposal → water/sewer together approved developers need

causal (attract, result in) construct attract congested roads new roads new apt >> new >> and (probably >> built houses residents crowded schools)

conditional (without)

building new roads or new schools → tax increases

causal (might destroy) growth >> might destroy attractive rural atmosphere

Evaluate

Sweet Lord, Almighty, that is too much information. We know that MBT is obsessed with conditional logic (because of its certainty), so we'd prioritize those definitive claims and let some of the wishy-washy stuff go (e.g. "probably result in" / "might destroy").

We have a chain going from residents not-banding together to water/sewer systems being built.

Those are needed to construct apartment houses, but it never says that they guarantee that apartment houses will be constructed, so we wouldn't want to continue the chain there.

IF those apt houses are constructed, we know we'll get new residents and we know we'll have such bad congestion that new roads will be built, and we know that new roads will mean big tax increases for the residents.

Goal

The correct answer will probably reward some indirect connection we know from either of the two definitive chains.

It might rope in some of the wishy-washy ideas, but if it does, it'll need to be appropriately wishy-washy about them since we're not guaranteed that those will occur.

11.

Which one of the following can be properly concluded from the passage?

  1. If the citizens of Glen

    Reversal / Negation

    As soon as we see that the trigger of this answer is "if citizens DO band together" we can leave. We know what happens if citizens DON'T band together. That's our trigger. We're not allowed to assume that the opposite happens if they do band together. That would be doing an illegal negation.

    20% picked this

  2. Correct

    If developers build apartment houses

    Why this is right

    This gives us the "head to tail" inference from our second chain. The building would attract new residents, which would certainly result in enough road congestion that new roads would be built, and building new roads requires substantial tax increases for the residents of Glen Hills.

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

    56% picked this

  3. If the rezoning proposal does

    Reversal / Negation

    We have a conditional saying "If the rezoning proposal DOES pass, then water/sewer systems are built", which could enable buildings to be constructed, which could ultimately lead to growth that destroys the rural atmosphere. But we can't go anywhere with "if the rezoning proposal DOESN'T pass", other than contraposing the first sentence. We know that if the proposal doesn't pass, then that means that the residents banded together. That's all we know. This answer is trying to get us to think, "if it doesn't pass, the water/sewer won't be built, so the apt houses won't be built, so we won't have all the growth that imperils the rural atmosphere", but that is all illegal negation thinking.

    14% picked this

  4. If developers do not build

    Reversal / Negation

    We were told that if they DO build houses, it'll lead to new roads, and new roads will require increased taxes. So we know that if they do build apt houses, the taxes will increase substantially. This is doing an illegal negation and saying, "if they don't build apt houses, the taxes will not increase substantially."

    4% picked this

  5. If developers do not build

    Reversal / Negation

    Same flaw as (D). We were told that if they DO build houses, it'll lead to congested roads and probably overcrowded schools. This is doing an illegal negation and saying, "if they don't build apt houses, we won't have congested roads and won't have overcrowded schools".

    7% picked this

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