Logical Reasoning

PT18 · S4 · Q23 Doctors in Britain have long suspected

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Doctors in Britain have long suspected that patients who wear tinted eyeglasses are abnormally prone to depression and hypochondria.

Conclusion

When people wear tinted eyeglasses, it's because they have a tendency towards depression or hypochondria.

Evidence

Doctors have long suspected that patients who wear tinted eyeglasses have a tendency towards depression and hypochondria.

There were psychological tests given at the hospital to people who had heart pain and digestive distress; the tests confirmed a link between tinted glasses and depression / hypochondria.

Evaluate

This argument is real hot mess. The second sentence is impossible to process, because the author hasn't explained the relevance of heart pain and digestive distress to the topic of "depression and hypochondria".

One of the answers will probably address this missing link.

The author's 3rd sentence, prefaced by "Perhaps", is not a real part of the argument. It's just a speculation. She pivots back into her argument with "At any rate .... ", meaning "either way. whether that's true or false".

Perhaps the EXCEPT answer will deal with the language in that sentence in some irrelevant way.

The final conclusion is a sort of Nec vs. Suff feeling reversal. The author has tried to build a case that depression and hypochondria lead to the world feeling like an irritating presence, leading people to wear tinted glasses in order to see less of the world.

If we were pretending that were a conditional, it's going from: if depress/hypo, then wear tinted glasses

Whereas the conclusion is saying, if wearing tinted glasses, then depress/hypo

By reasoning backwards in the conclusion, the author is failing to consider all the other reasons people might wear tinted sunglasses (i.e. shooting range / poker / your name is Macklemore). There might be more people wearing them for those reasons than for the depression / hypochondria reason.

Goal

Eliminate four things that weaken. - Expect alternate explanations for the correlation between tinted glasses and depress/hypo. - Expect an answer to use the heart pain / digestive distress somehow. - Expect an answer to address the backwards logic of the conclusion.

23.

Each of the following, if true, weakens the argument except:

  1. Some people wear tinted glasses

    Weakens

    This provides an alternate reason someone might be wearing tinted glasses. This makes the conclusion less likely. The more reasons there are for wearing tinted glasses (or the more people there are wearing tinted glasses for some other reason), the less we would assume that someone wearing tinted glasses was prone to depression / hypochondria.

    11% picked this

  2. Correct

    Even a depressed or hypochondriacal

    Why this is right

    No one ever said we shouldn't use diagnostic tests on people who are depressed or have hypochondria. No one was talking about them having invalid medical complaints. I'm not sure who this answer choice is yelling at, but it doesn't seem addressed at this argument. Hence, it doesn't weaken this argument.

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

    56% picked this

  3. The confirmatory tests were not

    Weakens

    This is certainly a very weird type of weaken answer, but it suggests that the sample of data being collected in Britain might be too atypical a lighting atmosphere from which to draw broad conclusions. This is a very narrow, tiny complaint, so it weakens to only a puny degree, but it still does more than the completely irrelevant correct answer.

    5% picked this

  4. Fashions with respect to wearing

    Weakens

    This provides an alternate reason someone might be wearing tinted glasses: for fashion reasons. Just like (A), by providing a different reason why someone might be wearing tinted glasses, you make the conclusion less likely to be true.

    14% picked this

  5. At the hospitals where the

    Weakens

    This, like (C), is a very puny weakener, but it does give us data points where there wasn't a relationship between tinted glasses and depression or hypochondria. So just on its face it weakens the conclusion somewhat, because the author is telling us those two things will go hand in hand.

    14% picked this

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