Self-study
Activist: Support Any member of the city council ought either to vote against the proposal or to abstain. ███ ██ ███ ███ ███████ ████████ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ███████ ██ ██ █████ ███ ██████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ██████ ████ ███████ ███ █████████
Summary
At least one council member should vote against the proposal, because the only other option that is acceptable to the activist is to abstain, and if all members abstain, the decision will be made by city voters.
Missing Connection
The activist is making a prescription constructed around avoiding a certain outcome (decision made by voters). For the conclusion to validly follow from the premises, we need to know that this outcome should be avoided.
16.
The conclusion of the activist's ████████ ███████ █████████ ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ████████
a
If all the ███████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ██████ ██████ ████ ██████████ ██████ ██ █████ ██ ███ █████████
(A) does not change that we have assumed that we are supposed to avoid a certain outcome. Without (A), that outcome is “decision made by voters,” with (A), that outcome is either the same or shifted slightly to “should not be decided in favor.” We need to know that certain outcomes should be avoided.
b
The proposal should ███ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ███████
This allows the conclusion to be validly drawn, and matches our prediction. If (B) is true, then it is also true that council members should act in a way to prevent this, i.e. at least one council member should vote against the proposal.
c
No members of ███ ████ ███████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ██ ███ █████████
This tells us that the council members’ decisions will be in accordance with the activists’ two prescribed options (abstain or vote against), but it does not help us to conclude that at least one member should vote against.
d
If not every ██████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ███████
(D) doesn’t fill the gap of needing to know that we should avoid having the decision made by city voters.
The contrapositive of (D) is also a sufficient-necessary swap of the second sentence in the stimulus. This turns the premise into a biconditional, but that doesn’t help us fill the gap.
e
If one member ██ ███ ████ ███████ █████ ██ ████ ███████ ███ █████████ ███ █████ ███████ ██████ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ █████████
(E) is telling us that following the activists advice would lead to one vote against the proposal and all others abstaining. We are trying to justify that at least one member should vote against, not figure out how the other members will vote.