Jane: Professor Harper’s ideas for modifying

Answer choices

1. A

   Out of Scope: weakness13% picked this

   Mark’s argument shows how a weakness in Jane’s argument can

   Although Mark provides another premise, he doesn't do so out of any explicit concern that Jane's argument currently contains some weakness. He just says, "What's more ... [is this other premise]."

   13%
2. B

   Opposite19% picked this

   Mark’s argument has a premise in common with

   They have different premises, same conclusion.

   19%
3. C

   Opposite5% picked this

   Mark and Jane use similar techniques to argue for

   They use different techniques to argue for the same conclusion.

   5%
4. D

   Out of Scope: restates18% picked this

   Mark’s argument restates Jane’s argument in

   Although Mark seems to be arguing for a similar conclusion, he doesn't restate anything Jane says. Everything Mark says is unique to Mark's paragraph.

   18%
5. E

   Correct45% picked this

   Mark’s argument and Jane’s argument are based on

   Why this is right

   Sneaky! Lucky for us, the other four answers have pretty strong mismatching qualities, so we're forced to work at understanding this answer choice. We were looking for an answer saying that Mark's and Jane's arguments were based on different premises. But competing suppositions means more than just different; it means that their premises conflict with each other. Do they? Jane was saying "there's no general agreement about what a guitar should sound like / no widely accepted way to say how good a guitar sounds". Mark was saying "Torres's design was near-universally adopted because it makes an improvement in tonal quality". As far as Jane is concerned, there's no such thing as saying one guitar has an improved sound/tone over another guitar, since there aren't widely accepted standards for the what a good guitar sounds like. But Mark is acting like Torres guitars pretty much objectively sound better. He implies that T's guitar design really did result in superior sound, unlike Harper's design. So, sure, choice (E), we could say that Jane's premise and Mark's premise are conflicting suppositions, since one person thinks there's no widely accepted way to judge the quality of a guitar's sound and the other person thinks that a rival guitar maker has been widely judged to have a higher quality sound.

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

   45%