Student Question: For E - wouldn't we need to have “ the computers that exist now have beliefs and desires,” for the conclusion to work? Doesn't the argument need to mention the claim to show the problem?

Tutor Response: The reason that we don’t need E is because the implication that “computers that exist now have beliefs and desires” is just mentioned as a result of the reasoning which is held to be flawed by the speaker. The speaker’s argument is that the suggested criterion is “obviously flawed” — meaning that there is a fundamental problem with the position of the other side.

Importantly, the claim itself does not need to be true (i.e., computers do not have to already have beliefs/desires) for the argument—that the criterion is flawed—to be reached. Instead, all the speaker is trying to do to show that the criterion leads to some absurd conclusions, which is what the claim “computers that exist now have beliefs/desires” is held to be.

This is similar to a sort of proof by contradiction: showing that someone who uses that criterion would reach some absurd or unacceptable results and therefore argue that the criterion itself is flawed. For this argument to work, we don’t want the results to be true, we just need them to be unacceptable.

Student Question: Need help verifying my understanding of the stimulus.

Is the flaw pointing out, if it is true that directions to the subconscious must be repeated many times in order for it to be effective, there cannot be anything such as an effective 'initial command to the subject's subconscious"? (because an effective initial command would require something before it, and that something before it would require another something before it, and so on?)

Tutor Response: You’re just about on the mark here with the flaw in the directions to the subconscious. The big problem is that you must repeat every command many times for it to be effective. That includes repeating many times the “initial” command for the subconscious to "experience every command as if it had been repeated 1,000 times".

So the main reason that Mesmosis’ initial command is perhaps not effective isn’t exactly because there isn’t anything before it, or anything before that… but because we don't know if the initial command has been repeated enough times for its instructions to take hold.

Student Question: Why is the answer A?

Tutor Answer: This question is really asking you to reconcile two seemingly contradictory statements by the doctor. First, the doctor says it’s time-consuming to go and retrieve patients’ files. Second, the doctor says no patients ask for files anyway. The second reason seems to cancel out the first—how could it be time-consuming if no patients ask for their files?

We need some way to reconcile the two situations. Something perhaps which would require retrieval of files or some other time-consuming process, even if no patients ask. That’s what A points to. If doctors must be “ready to produce immediately” the records, they would need to retrieve them for each patient already—which makes it time-consuming. This must occur even without patients explicitly requesting it.

Student Question: How should I know that the support is not the conclusion? (Thus, the important social function of positively reinforcing...)

Tutor Answer: The tricky thing about this question is that the support you mention is really a sub-conclusion in itself as well! It’s just not the main conclusion when there is more to be said on the matter. My strategy for these is to always ask myself, “okay, so then what?” after each statement in the stimulus.

Reading the first premise “human psychology is still driven primarily by personal interaction” makes me wonder—why do you think that, and why does it matter? That points toward the argument that “Positive reinforcement of [good] behaviors can be served only if [we know who is thanking whom].”

That seems pretty good, and sounds very much like a conclusion, especially with the word “Thus.” Okay, so then what?

We still have that first sentence in the stimulus: “The obligation to express gratitude cannot be fulfilled anonymously.” I would suggest that this sentence answers the “so then what” question:

Support/Sub-Conclusion: It’s important to know who is thanking whom.

Main Conclusion: [Hence,] we cannot anonymously give gratitude.

Notice that this doesn’t really work the other way: [Because] we cannot anonymously give gratitude, [Hence,] it’s important to know who is thanking whom.

Paraphrasing and filling in these kinds of marker words like “because,” “hence,” etc. can also make the relationship between statements a little clearer!

Student Question: I think this question is extremely poor. How am I to know that the assumption ambiguous to poorly phrased is the correct assumption? You could just as easily make the assumption that ambiguous response → useless for part A. I know the statements referred to in part A is not the response, but both are described as ambiguous, so the ambiguous statement → ambiguous result → useless seems just as easy to make as assuming because a question is ambiguous → poorly phrased.

Tutor Response: In my experience, the key to looking for the “correct”, or relevant assumptions is to center ourselves around the conclusion, which in this case is “…the survey’s responses are also ambiguous.”

Why do they think this? Well, because 1. “This statement is particularly ambiguous” and 2. It’s “amenable to” another interpretation.

You are right that it seems like only another step in Answer Choice (A) to go from ambiguous question to ambiguous response to useless. The word “useless” could certainly be relevant if our conclusion was about the usefulness of the survey and its responses! But they aren’t going that far. All they are saying in conclusion is that the responses are ambiguous, not useless.

(A) also misses the mark slightly by saying that what is useless is not the responses, which we care about, but uncontroversial statements, which doesn’t take us any closer to the conclusion.

The question asks for a general proposition to which this reasoning conforms. In other words, we only want a general rule to get us from ambiguously-asked question to the next step, “the survey’s responses are also ambiguous.” D does this, and no further.

Now, you raise a good point that “poorly phrased” and “ambiguous” are not precisely the same. But I would suggest that they can be put together for the purposes of this argument more easily than compared to our other answer choices, and making only this specific connection brings us toward the conclusion.