Logical Reasoning

PT23 · S2 · Q12 Political theorist: The vast majority

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Political theorist: The vast majority of countries that have a single political party have corrupt national governments, but some countries with a plurality of parties also have corrupt national governments.

Statements

Conditional (all) Corrupt national government → weak local governments

Quantified (most, some) The vast majority of single-party countries have corrupt national governments.

Some countries with a plurality of parties also have corrupt national governments.

Evaluate

When we see a mix of quantifier claims, we initially only care about ones that are strong enough to qualify as a conditional rule (i.e. all, each, any, every, no, none).

We have one conditional in the final sentence. The only way the other facts matter to us is if they trigger this conditional. The two ways to trigger it are, Corrupt nat'l govt → weak local not weak local → not corrupt national

Do either of the Facts talk about "corrupt national government" or "not weak local governments"?

They both talk about "corrupt national", so both of them will provide that bonus fact of "weak local government".

Most countries with a single party have corrupt nat'l govts (and thus have weak local governments).

Some countries with a plurality of parties have corrupt nat'l govts (and thus have weak local governments).

Goal

When we see a mix of Quantified claims and Conditional rules, they're usually testing some Trait Overlap inference.

Because we know that 1) Most countries with a single party have corrupt nat'l govts (and thus have weak local governments).

2) Some countries with a plurality of parties have corrupt nat'l govts (and thus have weak local governments)(.

we know that 1) single party overlaps with weak local 2) plurality of parties overlaps with weak local

12.

If all of the political theorist's statements are true, which one of the following must also be true?

  1. Every country with weak local

    Too Strong

    We know that ... Some countries with a plurality of parties have corrupt nat'l govts (and thus have weak local governments. So we know that some countries with weak local governments have a plurality of parties. That contradicts this answer. Just seeing that it starts with Weak Local Government → is also enough to get rid of it. The only triggers we were given are "Corrupt National Government" and "NOT Weak Local Government".

    1% picked this

  2. Correct

    Some countries with weak local

    Why this is right

    We knew that ... Some countries with a plurality of parties have corrupt nat'l govts (and thus have weak local governments). So we know there's some overlap between weak local and plurality of political parties.

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

    82% picked this

  3. Some countries with weak local

    Unsupported

    All three facts are about countries that have corrupt governments. There's no information about countries without corrupt national governments. It's entirely possible that weak local governments only occur within corrupt national government countries.

    5% picked this

  4. The majority of countries with

    Too Strong

    The only "Most X's" group we could sign off on would be "Most countries with a single political party", because that was the only MOST fact provided. If they never provided a fact about most countries with weak local, then we can't derive an answer with "most countries with weak local" as its trigger. We know most single-party countries have weak local governments. This answer reverses that claim: "most weak local have single-party". Reversing a MOST claim gives you a very different claim! e.g. most senators are men (true) vs. most men are senators (false)

    6% picked this

  5. Fewer multiparty countries than single-party

    Unsupported Comparison

    This is trying to make us think that the first claim about "Most" single-party countries is speaking about a bigger quantity of countries than the "Some" multiple-party countries, just because the quantifier Most has a higher minimum than the quantifier Some. But we can never ascertain the number of members from the quantifier given. We might make a statement about "Most SCOTUS judges play golf with the President" and be talking about five people and then make a statement about "some women freeze their eggs" and be talking about tens of thousands of people. We can't derive that "more people play golf with the President than freeze their eggs" just because one claim was about Most and the other claim used Some.

    6% picked this

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