Self-study
Support If you know a lot about history, it will be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals. ███ ██████████████ ███ ████ ███ ████ ████ █████ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ███ ████████ ████ █ █████ ██████ ██ ███████ ██████ ██████████ ██ ███ ███ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ █ ████ ██ ████████ ██ ████ ███ ██ ████ ███ ███ ██ ███████ ██████ ███ ███ ██████████████
Summarize Argument
The author’s conditional conclusion is that if you’re not widely read—and therefore don’t know a lot about history—then it won’t be easy to impress intellectuals. As premises, he gives two conditional claims:
(1) If you know a lot about history, it’s easy to impress intellectuals.
(2) If you’re not well-read on history, you won’t know a lot about history (or, taking the contrapositive, to know a lot about history, you must be well-read on history).
Identify and Describe Flaw
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of mistaking sufficiency for necessity. The author treats “know history” as necessary for “impress.” But “know history” is sufficient, not necessary. So negating “know history” tells us nothing about “impress.”
In other words, the argument overlooks the possibility that one can not know a lot about history and yet still easily impress intellectuals.
7.
The argument's reasoning is flawed ███████ ███ ████████ █████████ ███ ███████████ ████
a
many intellectuals are ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███████
This wouldn’t damage the argument, so overlooking it can’t be a flaw. The author argues that knowing a lot about history is necessary to easily impress intellectuals, but he makes no assumptions about those intellectuals’ own knowledge or reading of history.
b
there are people ███ █████ █████ ███████ ███ ██ ███ ███████ █████████████
This wouldn’t damage the argument, so overlooking it can’t be a flaw. The premise establishes that knowing a lot about history is sufficient for making it easy to impress intellectuals. But merely "learning" about history isn't the same as knowing a lot about history. And, just because it's easy to impress intellectuals does not imply that one will in fact impress intellectuals. So under the author's logic it's entirely possible there are those who fail to impress intellectuals despite learning a lot about history.
c
it is more █████████ ██ ███████ ██████ ███ ███ ███ █████████████ ████ ██████ ███ ███ █████████████
This wouldn’t damage the argument, so overlooking it can’t be a flaw. The argument is simply about whether one can, or cannot, easily impress intellectuals. How important it might be to impress them, or to impress anyone else, is irrelevant.
d
there are other ████ ████ ██ ███████ █████████████ ████ ██ ███ ███████ ███████ ███████
This means that knowing a lot about history isn’t necessary to easily impress intellectuals. This is exactly what the argument overlooks. The conclusion mistakenly treats “know history” as a necessary condition, while in the premises, “know history” is merely sufficient.
e
people who are ███ █████████████ ███ ██ █████████ ████ ██████ ████ ██████ ███ ███ █████████████
This wouldn’t damage the argument, so overlooking it can’t be a flaw. The argument is about whether one can, or cannot, easily impress intellectuals. How easy it is to impress anyone else is irrelevant.