Logical Reasoning

PT21 · S2 · Q25 The reasoning in the meteorologist’s

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Statistician: Changes in the Sun’s luminosity correlate exceedingly well with average land temperatures on Earth.

Conclusion

The Sun's luminosity does not essentially control land temperatures on Earth.

Evidence

Ask any professional meteorologist and they'll tell you that's not the case. (Climate is so complicated, that no significant aspect, like land temperatures, could be controlled by a single variable, like Sun luminosity).

Evaluate

At first it seems hard to disagree with the logic of this argument. If you accept the premise that , then it doesn't seem like there's any way to argue that the Sun's Luminosity does control land temperatures.

We'd have to start impugning whether the professional meteorologists' opinion is something we want to trust here. Are they an unqualified appeal to authority?

That seems silly; climate should be their area of expertise.

It was at this point in The Struggle, that I noticed that the first person actually acknowledges that .

So the meteorologist objected to the statistician by saying something that the statistician had already acknowledged.

If would be like if you said, and then someone retorted,

Goal

Point out that the meteorologist's putative (supposed) objection was appealing to a fact that the statistician had already acknowledged.

25.

The reasoning in the meteorologist’s counterargument is questionable because that argument

  1. rejects a partial explanation, not

    Bad Premise Match

    The author does reject an explanation, but the basis is because the author thinks it's dead wrong, not because it is "incomplete".

    23% picked this

  2. fails to distinguish phenomena that

    Bad Argument Match

    I can't really tell what this answer is saying, but it doesn't resemble this argument or our pre-phrase enough to engage. We wanted something like, "Your objection was just citing a group of people that the other person already knew disagreed with her." We weren't objecting to the meteorologist's argument because it was sloppy science that failed to distinguish between luminosity, as a property that exists outside the system of Earth's climate vs. a property that only exists within Earth's climate.

    13% picked this

  3. calls into question the existence

    Bad Premise Match

    The author doesn't discuss the correlation at all. The author is ruling out (a priori) the logical possibility that something like solar luminosity could determine land temperatures. He doesn't say "the correlation does not exist"; he's just suggesting that there must be some other explanation since it's not possible for luminosity by itself to control land temperature.

    12% picked this

  4. dismisses a hypothesis on the

    Bad Premise Match

    The author does dismiss a hypothesis, but she does so on the grounds that any professional meteorologist would tell you that such a hypothesis is impossible, not because it's not a scientifically significant idea. To the contrary, it sounds like this author's mind would be blown with scientific significance if she found out the statistician were correct.

    2% picked this

  5. Correct

    appeals to the authoritativeness of

    Why this is right

    The author does appeal to authority ("any professional meteorologist will tell ya ..."). The statistician had already acknowledged that this authority's opinion was different, so there was no value in bringing it up. Meanwhile, the author failed to respond to the statistician's evidence: luminosity and land temperatures are tightly correlated! That combo is what made the meteorologist's response so flawed: it didn't offer any other explanation for the correlation, and instead just reiterated "but these people don't think you're right!"

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

    49% picked this

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