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.

Pro-Demolish Position

The abandoned Carlton Street houses were correctly demolished.

Pro-Demolish Evidence

Everyone agreed that there was a safety threat and that demolition succeeded in eliminating the safety threat.

Anti-Demolish Position

Don't demolish the abandoned Carlton Street houses

Anti-Demolish Evidence

The buildings are still structurally sound. The city has a fund to help people in need of housing buy and rehab these types of buildings.

Evaluate

This question stem is hella weird — it asks for a principle that either proves it was right to demolish or wrong to demolish.

The right answer must, when applied to the facts, definitively pick demolition or rehabilitation.

Because of that, it's hard or maybe pointless to prephrase an answer. We don't know which position the correct answer will support.

Goal

Theoretically, we're either looking for a Pro-Demolish principle like

or an Anti-Demolish position like,

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 is a complex conditional, with the form "When X is true, Y is true, unless Z is true" We rewrite those as X and ~Z --> Y So that would be "If we're trying to figure out what do to with an abandoned building and the building is not believed to pose a safety threat, then ... " That rule won't apply to our situation because these abandoned buildings DO pose a safety threat.

    36% picked this

  2. Correct

    When there are two proposals

    Why this is right

    Welcome to the land of nightmares, friends. We're going to have to chew on this s*** sandwich one shard of glass at a time: Do we have two proposals for solving a neighborhood problem? Yes. Demolish or Rehab, to solve the safety threat problem. Does only one of those proposals preclude the possibility of the trying the other one later? Sure. Demolishing the building would preclude the possibility of trying to rehab the buildings (if demolishing failed to remove the safety threat). You can't rehab a pile of rubble. That's just a re-build. Meanwhile, rehabbing the buildings might fail to remove the safety threat, but it would still allow us the option of trying the demolish plan later. Okay, so the trigger applies to our situation. What does the Outcome instruct us to do? The approach that doesn't foreclose (i.e. preclude) the other possibility should be adopted. Rehabbing doesn't foreclose the option to demolish later, whereas demolishing forecloses the option to rehab later. Thus, rehabbing should be adopted!

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

    46% picked this

  3. If one of two proposals

    Bad Outcome Match

    Once again we have a complex conditional that we can put into the form of X and ~Z --> Y "If only one proposal requires govt funding and govt funds have not already been secured, then ... " Well neither part of that trigger really matches up. We know that rehabbing involves government funding but demolishing might also. Who is paying for these bulldozers and for the crew that will haul away the rubble? Furthermore, in the case of funding for rehabs, the funding has already been secured. Since the trigger of this rule doesn't apply to our situation, the answer is useless to us.

    6% picked this

  4. No plan for eliminating a

    Bad Outcome Match

    Let's say we thoroughly investigate all other possible alternatives. Does this rule say that we should go with one of the alternatives? Does it say that we should go with one of the original plans? Neither. The rule is saying "Carrying out a plan for demolishing requires that you first thoroughly investigate alternatives" Demolishing → Thorough Research ~Thorough Research → ~Demolish This rule doesn't end up with a right side that tells us what to pick. It only has the power to prove we shouldn't demolish. It has no power to prove we should rehab (and the question stem asks for us to prove one or the other proposal). Plus, could we even fire that trigger? Were we told that demolition alternatives like the rehab plan haven't yet been thoroughly researched? No, we have no idea whether that trigger applies, so we can't launch it in the first place, and where it would take us would be too inconclusive to be a correct answer.

    6% picked this

  5. No proposal for dealing with

    Bad Outcome Match

    This rule would only allow someone to say that a proposal shouldn't be adopted. It has no power to say that you should adopt a certain proposal, so it would never achieve the task the question stem assigns us.

    6% picked this

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