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dvitran404
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dvitran404
Monday, Jul 22 2013

This is PT11 S2 Q18 I believe. First, it is important that the premises (for the main conclusion), which you have written above, are actually themselves conclusions - they are sub-conclusions of the main argument. This question may be tricky if you didn't realize this because the answer choice proceeds not by attacking the relationship between the premises and the main conclusion but instead by undermining the argument in favor of these premises.

The arguments for these sub-conclusions go as follows:

Sub-conclusion/Premise 1: (All) TV *watchers* have UVW attribute.

Why? Because TV *watching* causes UVW.

Sub-conclusion/Premise 2: (All) Newspaper *readers* have XYZ attribute.

Why? Because newspaper *reading* causes XYZ.

These arguments, however, are weak: they (among other things) fail to consider the possibility that TV watchers/newspaper readers participate in other activities that may outweigh the the UVW/XYZ effect.

The answer choice capitalizes on these weaknesses by showing that it is not necessarily true that (because they watch TV) all TV watchers have no expectations of careful discussion of public issues; if some TV watchers are in fact also habitual newspaper readers, (and therefore read newspapers) then the effect of reading newspapers may very well counteract the loss of expectation.

HTH!

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