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PT23.S3.Q16

SECTION 1 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 2 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 3 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24

SECTION 4 · rc

PASSAGE 1
Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5

PASSAGE 2
Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13

PASSAGE 3
Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18

PASSAGE 4
Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

PrepTest 23 - Section 3 - Question 16

Question

Explanation

Analytics

Show analysis

Magazine article: Support Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually deters people from committing them. ███ █ █████ ████ ██ █████████ █████████ ███ ████████ █████████ ████ ████ ███████ ████ ██████████ ██ ███ █ ██████████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ██████████

Structure: Flawed Argument

The argument starts with a conditional statement. If punishment deters people from committing crimes, it is justified:

deter → justified

The argument then states that empirical data shows that punishment doesn't work as a deterrent. Therefore, the argument concludes that punishment is never justified.

Notable Flaws

We start with a statement that deterrence is sufficient to justify a crime:

deter → justify

The stimulus then adds, as a second premise, that the sufficient condition of deterrence is never met, and then concludes that the necessary condition therefore never occurs:

/deter → /justify

This is a classic sufficiency/necessity confusion. Knowing that the sufficient condition is never met doesn't imply that the necessary condition can never occur. There might be other conditions that can justify punishment, besides it working as a deterrent.

Analysis by ArdaschirArguelles

Show answer

16.

The reasoning in the magazine █████████ ████████ ██ ██████ ███████ ███ ████████

depends on data ████ █████ ██ ██████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ ██████

Incorrect. We don't have any reason to think the data is biased. In fact, everything we know about the data — that it is "carefully assembled and analyzed" and "empirical" — seems to suggest the opposite.

mistakenly allows the ███ ████ ████████████ ██ █████ ██ ███████

Incorrect. The argument never uses "punishment" in two different senses.

mistakes being sufficient ██ ███████ ██████████ ███ █████ ████████ ██ ███████ ██

Correct. The argument states that deterrence is sufficient to justify punishment, then concludes that the absence of deterrence means punishment is never justified — as if deterrence were a necessary condition for punishment. There could be other conditions sufficient to justify punishment, even if deterrence doesn't occur.

ignores the problem ██ ██████████ █████████ ███ ████████

Incorrect. This problem isn't especially relevant to the argument, which never makes any claims about who is being punished. The key flaw is the sufficiency/necessity confusion.

attempts to be ████ ███████ ████ ███ ███████ ██████ ████████ ██████

Incorrect. We don't know anything about how precise this subject matter "allows" us to be. This doesn't describe the key sufficiency/necessity confusion flaw in the argument.

Difficulty

Question

92% of people who answer get this correct

This is a slightly challenging question.

CURVE

Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right

25% 128

140

75% 151

Analysis

Question Stem Tags

Flaw or descriptive weakening

Stems that ask us to articulate a flaw in the stimulus' argument, either in abstract terms or by pointing out a weakness.

Stimulus Tags

Conditional reasoning

Stimuli that feature conditional and set logic (e.g. A → B, A is true, therefore B is true).

Answer Popularity

Popularity Avg. score

160

159

92%

169

164

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