Self-study
Conclusion Publicity campaigns for endangered species are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems, for while the ease of attributing feelings to large mammals facilitates evoking sympathy for them, Support it is more difficult to elicit sympathy for other kinds of organisms, such as the soil microorganisms on which large ecosystems and agriculture depend.
Summary
The author concludes that publicity campaigns for endangered species are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems.
Why?
Because it’s more difficult to elicit sympathy for organisms besides large mammals, such as soil microorganisms that are important to the environment.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the degree to which we can elicit sympathy for an organism is relevant to the likelihood that a publicity campaign related to that organism will have an impact.
The author also assumes that the “most important environmental problems” involve something besides large mammals. (Notice “most important enviromental problems” is a completely new concept in the conclusion. The premises don’t tell us what those problems are, so there must be an assumption about that concept.)
16.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ ████████
a
The most important █████████████ ████████ ███████ ██████████ ███████ █████ ████ █████ ████████
Necessary, because if this were not true — if the most important environmental problems do NOT involve endangered species other than large mammals — then the premise concerning the difficulty of eliciting sympathy for animals besides large mammals would provide no support to the conclusion.
b
Microorganisms cannot experience ████ ██ ████ █████ █████████
Not necessary, because the concept of “pain” and organisms having “feelings” is irrelevant to the reasoning. Although the author refers to the ease of “attributing feelings” to large animals, that just means people perceive large animals as having feelings. That doesn’t commit the author to any opinion about pain or whether organisms actually have feelings.
c
Publicity campaigns for ███ ███████████ ███ ███ ████ █████████ ████ ████ ██████ ████████ ███ ████ █████████
Not necessary, because the conclusion concerns publicity campaigns “for endangered species” — this is a narrower group of campaigns than those that are “for the environment.” Also, the author doesn’t have to assume anything about when publicity campaigns are the “most effective.” Although it is true that the author assumes some kind of relationship between eliciting sympathy and impact of a publicity campaign for endangered species, this doesn’t imply that these campaigns are the “most” effective when eliciting sympathy.
d
People ignore environmental ████████ ██████ ████ ███████ ███ ████████ ████ ██████ █████████ ████ █████ ████ ███████████
Not necessary, because “ignore” is too extreme. Although the author does think that a campaign for endangered species is more likely to be effective when it can elicit sympathy for an organism, that doesn’t commit the author to thinking that people will “ignore” environmental problems if they don’t have sympathy for the creatures affected by it. Perhaps those people will just donate less money, but not entirely ignore it.
e
An organism can ██ ███████████████ ███████████ ████ ██ ██ ███████ █████ ██████████ ██ ████████████
Not necessary, because the reference to large ecosystems and agriculture was simply part of an example of how animals besides large mammals can be important to the environment. There may be other ways in which an organism can be environmentally important besides affecting large ecosystems or agriculture; the author doesn’t deny this possibility. Those other organisms would simply be additional examples of how an animal, including ones besides large mammals, can be important. Also, the argument concerns the “most important” environmental problems; so we don’t know what the author thinks about important problems that are not the most important.