Self-study
Support If the proposed tax reduction package is adopted this year, the library will be forced to discontinue its daily story hours for children. ███ ██ ███ █████ █████ █████ ███ █████████████ ████ ███████ ████ ██ ███████ ███████████████ ██ ███ ████████ ███ █████████ ███████ ████ ███ ██ ███████ ████ █████
Objective: Identify a Sufficient Assumption
The argument concludes that a particular tax reduction package will not be adopted. Why not? Because if the package were adopted, then the library would have to cancel daily story hours. And if the library cancelled daily story hours, that would seriously inconvenience parents. We can also chain these premises together to infer that if the package is adopted, that would seriously inconvenience parents.
P1: adopt package → cancel story hours
P2: cancel story hours → inconvenience parents
P1 + P2: adopt package → inconvenience parents
______
C: /adopt package
So what's missing to get us to a properly drawn conclusion? A statement that a measure which inconveniences parents will not be adopted. This would deny the final necessary condition of our chained conditional premises, which would allow us to also deny the first sufficient condition of adopting the package—leading straight to the argument's conclusion.
13.
Which one of the following, ██ ████████ ██████ ███ ██████████ ██████████ ██ ██ ████████ ██████
a
Any tax reduction ███████ ████ ████ ███ █████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████ █████ █████ █████ ████ ██ ███████ ████ █████
Even if a package that wouldn't affect story hours would be adopted, that doesn't tell us that the proposed package, which would affect story hours, won't be adopted. It's possible that multiple tax reduction packages could be adopted, so this doesn't get us closer to the conclusion.
b
Every tax reduction ███████ ████ █████ █████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████ █████ █████ █████ █████ ███████ █████████████ ████████
This is just a restatement of the argument's premises chained together. We already have all this information; (B) doesn't give us the final missing piece we need to guarantee the conclusion.
c
No tax reduction ███████ ████ █████ ███████ █████████████ ███████ █████ ████ ██ █████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████ █████ █████ ██████
In other words, if a package would seriously inconvenience parents, then it would force the library to cancel story hours. This makes inconveniencing parents a sufficient condition for cancelling story hours, but that still doesn't help with reaching the conclusion. This doesn't tell us anything about why the package wouldn't be adopted.
d
No tax reduction ███████ ████ █████ ███████ █████████████ ███████ ████ ██ ███████ ████ █████
Here's our missing piece linking together the inconvenience to parents with the package's adoption (or lack thereof). We know that the package would inconvenience parents by forcing story hours to be cancelled, so (D) gives us what we need to guarantee that the package won't be adopted.
e
Any tax reduction ███████ ████ ████ ███ ███████ █████████████ ███████ ████ ██ ███████ ████ █████
As with (A), this fails because it doesn't prevent the package in question from being adopted. It could be that multiple tax reduction packages will be adopted, some that inconvenience parents and some that don't.