PT16.S1.Q8

PrepTest 16 - Section 1 - Question 8

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Political theorist: The chief foundations of all governments are the legal system and the police force; and as Support there cannot be a good legal system where the police are not well paid, Conclusion it follows that where the police are well paid there will be a good legal system.

Argument Summary: Flawed Reasoning

The political theorist opens with a statement about the legal system and the police force being the "chief foundations of all governments." This is more of a contextual statement, since we don't really return to this idea of the government's foundations. The theorist's key premise is in the next sentence, that "there cannot be a good legal system where the police are not well paid":

/police well paid → /good legal system

The theorist concludes that "where the police are well paid there will be a good legal system":

police well paid → good legal system

Hopefully you can see that this conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. At most, the contrapositive of the premise would tell us that if there is a good legal system, we know that the police are well paid:

good legal system → police well paid

But nothing in the stimulus lets us conclude that where the police are well paid, there will definitely be a good legal system. The argument relies on a sufficiency/necessity confusion.

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8.

The reasoning in the argument ██ ███ █████ ███████ ██ █████ ██ █████████ ████

a

many governments with ███ █████ ███████ ████ ██████ ████ ██████ ██████
Incorrect. (A) would be a fact consistent with the argument, but the flaw in the argument isn't that it fails to establish that "many" governments with bad legal systems also have poorly paid police forces.
1%
b

bad governments with ████ █████ ███████ ████ ████ ██████ ████ ██████ ██████
Incorrect. (B) actually contradicts the argument, since, according to the argument, it's not possible to have a "good" legal system if the police are poorly paid.
2%
c

a well-paid police █████ ██████ ██ █████████ ███████ █ ████ █████ ██████
Incorrect. The argument doesn't tell us anything about what makes a police force "effective" once it is well-paid. The "effectiveness" of a police force isn't relevant to this argument, so the argument doesn't need to establish (C).
10%
d

a well-paid police █████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████████ █ ████ █████ ██████
Correct. (D) accurately summarizes what we described in our analysis above: the argument concludes that a well-paid police force is sufficient to guarantee a good legal system, while it has only established that a well-paid police force is necessary for a good legal system to exist.
85%
e

some bad governments ████ ████ █████ ███████
Incorrect. The argument doesn't tell us anything about "good" or "bad" governments in general, only about the relationship between having a well-paid police force and having a good legal system.
2%

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