Self-study
To discover what percentage of teenagers believe in telekinesis—the psychic ability to move objects without physically touching them—a recent survey asked a representative sample of teenagers whether they agreed with the following statement: "A person's thoughts can influence the movement of physical objects." But because Support this statement is particularly ambiguous and is amenable to a naturalistic, uncontroversial interpretation, Conclusion the survey's responses are also ambiguous.
Summary
The author concludes that responses to the telekinesis survey are ambiguous. As support, she says that the survey’s question was ambiguous and could’ve been interpreted in a naturalistic and uncontroversial way.
Notable Assumptions
The author concludes that the survey responses are ambiguous, but her premises never establish that an ambiguously worded survey question will lead to ambiguous responses. She simply assumes this to be the case.
Her reasoning conforms closely to the statement or proposition that an ambiguous survey question will lead to ambiguous survey results.
2.
The reasoning above conforms most ███████ ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███████ █████████████
a
Uncontroversial statements are ███████ ██ ████████
The author isn’t talking about an uncontroversial statement. She just notes that the statement could be interpreted in an uncontroversial way because it’s ambiguous. Instead of (A), she assumes that ambiguous statements lead to ambiguous responses.
b
Every statement is ████████ ██ ███████ ████████████████
The author notes that the statement could’ve been interpreted in different ways, but (B) doesn’t support her conclusion that the survey responses are ambiguous. Just because every statement can be interpreted in several ways doesn’t mean that this survey’s responses are ambiguous.
c
Responses to surveys ███ ██████ ███████████ ██ ███ ████████ █████████ ███ ████ ████████
The author is trying to establish that the survey responses are ambiguous. Also (C) is addressing survey questions that are well phrased, but the author is talking about a survey question that’s ambiguous.
d
Responses people give ██ ██████ ███████ █████████ ███ ██████ ██ ██ ██████████
The author’s argument closely conforms to this proposition. She argues that the survey’s responses are ambiguous because the survey question is ambiguous. This is supported by the proposition that people give ambiguous responses to poorly phrased questions.
e
Statements about psychic █████████ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ████████████ ████████████████
The author gives one example of a statement about telekinesis that can be interpreted in a naturalistic way. She doesn’t suggest that all statements about all physic phenomena can always be interpreted this way.