Logical Reasoning

PT8 · S1 · Q20 Saunders: Everyone at last week’s

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Saunders: Everyone at last week’s neighborhood association meeting agreed that the row of abandoned and vandalized houses on Carlton Street posed a threat to the safety of our neighborhood.

Saunders' Position

Saunders's conclusion: demolishing the abandoned Carlton Street houses was the right choice; the opponents who wanted to rehabilitate them were wrong. Evidence: demolition succeeded in eliminating the safety threat.

Opposing Position

Opponents argued the buildings were "basically sound" and a city fund existed to help people buy and rehabilitate such houses. They wanted rehabilitation rather than demolition.

Question Stem (special)

This stem is unusual — it asks for a principle that determines the right answer one way OR the other. The right answer must, when applied to the facts, definitively pick demolition or rehabilitation.

Evaluate

The key structural difference between the two options: demolition is irreversible (you cannot rehab a demolished house). Rehab is reversible (if rehab fails, you can still demolish). So a principle that says would clearly pick rehabilitation here.

Goal

Find a principle that, applied to these facts, locks in either demolition or rehabilitation as the correct call.

20.

Which one of the following principles, if established, would determine that demolishing the houses was the right decision or instead would determine that the proposal advocated by the opponents of demolition should have been adopted?

  1. When what to do about

    Bad Outcome Match

    This principle says: pick the option that produces the most housing for needy people, unless the building is believed to pose a safety threat. Everyone in the stimulus agreed the houses posed a safety threat — so the safety exception fires, and the principle is silent on what to do once the exception applies. It does not lock in either side. To determine the right call, the principle would have to dictate an outcome here, and it does not.

    34% picked this

  2. Correct

    When there are two proposals

    Why this is right

    This principle nails the structural asymmetry between the two options. Demolition forecloses rehab — once the house is rubble, you cannot rehabilitate it. Rehab does not foreclose demolition — if rehab fails to solve the safety problem, you can still demolish later. So one option (demolition) "would preclude the possibility of trying the other approach if the first proves unsatisfactory" and the other (rehab) does not. The principle says: pick the option that does not foreclose the other. Applied here, that picks rehab — meaning the opponents (rehab proponents) should have been adopted. The principle definitively determines an outcome — that is exactly what the stem asks for.

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

    47% picked this

  3. If one of two proposals

    Bad Outcome Match

    This principle says: when one proposal needs government funding and the other does not, pick the non-funded one unless the funding has already been secured. The stimulus says the city had "established a fund" for buying and rehabilitating such buildings — which sounds like funding is in place — so the exception fires. Once the exception fires, the principle is silent. It does not determine which side was right.

    7% picked this

  4. No plan for eliminating a

    Bad Outcome Match

    This principle says no plan to demolish basically sound houses should be carried out until all other alternatives have been thoroughly investigated. The stimulus does not tell us whether all alternatives were thoroughly investigated, and the principle ends with a delay condition rather than a definitive call. It might bar demolition under certain conditions, but it does not affirmatively pick rehab as the right choice or affirm demolition as right. It does not determine the outcome the stem requires.

    6% picked this

  5. No proposal for dealing with

    Bad Outcome Match

    This principle says no proposal should be adopted merely because a majority prefer it. That challenges Saunders's reasoning style (citing majority support), but it does not pick which side was right. Even if a proposal cannot be adopted by majority alone, that says nothing about whether demolition or rehab was substantively the better call. The principle limits a method of decision-making but does not determine the substantive outcome.

    5% picked this

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