Self-study
Politician: Conclusion The bill that makes using car phones while driving illegal should be adopted. ██ ███████ ██ ████ ████ ██ █████████ ██ █ ███████ ███ ██████ ███████ █████ █ ███ █████ █████████ █████████ ███ ███████ █████ ██ ████ █████ █ ██████ ██ ████ ████████ ██████ █████ ██ ████████ ████ █████ █████ ███ ██████ █████ ███████ ██ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ██ ███
Argument Summary
The politician concludes that a bill making car phone use while driving illegal should be adopted. What's the support? First, using a car phone seriously distracts the driver, and this distraction poses a threat to safe driving. Second, making it illegal would deter people from using car phones while driving. Putting these together, the bill would reduce a threat to public safety by deterring people from a dangerous behavior.
We know from the premises that the bill would deter car phone use while driving, and car phone use while driving threatens safe driving. So it makes sense to think the bill would reduce a threat to safe driving. But the conclusion goes beyond that reasonable inference. It says the bill should be adopted. That's a prescriptive claim about what we ought to do, and the premises alone don't get us there.
Objective: Bridge the Gap
As with many Sufficient Assumption questions, there's a gap between what the premises establish and a new concept in the conclusion. The premises establish that the bill would reduce a threat to public safety. But the conclusion says the bill should be adopted. Nothing in the premises tells us when a bill should be adopted. So we want a bridge that connects "reduces a threat to public safety" to "should be adopted."
We're looking for something like: if a proposed law would reduce a threat to public safety, then it should be adopted.
13.
The argument's main conclusion follows █████████ ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ████████
a
The more attention ███ ████ ██ ████████ ███ █████ █ ██████ ███ ███
(A) tells us that paying more attention to driving makes you safer. But this doesn't tell us when a bill should be adopted. Even if we accept that more attention means safer driving, we still have no bridge from "this bill reduces a threat to safety" to "this bill should be adopted." Without that bridge, the conclusion doesn't follow.
b
The only way ██ ██████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████ ██████ █████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ ███████ ████████████
This tells us that legislation is the only way to reduce the threat posed by car phones. But "only legislation can address this problem" doesn't mean "this specific bill should be adopted." There could be other bills that address the problem differently. And even if this were the only possible bill, (B) still doesn't tell us that reducing threats to public safety is something we should do through legislation. It establishes that legislation is necessary for the goal, but never establishes that the goal is one we should pursue.
c
Some distractions interfere ████ █████ ███████ ██ ██████ ███████ ██ ███████████
(C) says some distractions interfere with safe driving. You might find this tempting because it sounds like it supports the premise that car phone use poses a threat to safe driving. But even if we grant that car phone distraction is one of those distractions, we still don't have any bridge to the conclusion that the bill should be adopted. Don't pick this answer just because you think it's supported by the stimulus. This isn't a Must Be True question; we need an answer that makes the conclusion follow logically.
d
Any proposed law ████ █████ ██████ █ ██████ ██ ██████ ██████ ██████ ██ ████████
(D) gives us the exact bridge we want. It says that any proposed law that would reduce a threat to public safety should be adopted. The premises already establish that this bill would reduce a threat to public safety: car phone use while driving threatens safe driving, and making it illegal would deter people from doing it. So the bill would reduce a threat to public safety. (D) then tells us that any such bill should be adopted.
e
Car phone use ██ ██████████ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ██████ ██ ███ ████
Like (A) and (C), this answer doesn't establish when a bill should be adopted, so it can't bridge the gap to the conclusion.