@lavender_27

Argument:

• Premise: Ms. S wrote article, people damaged Mendel's stuff bc of article

• Conclusion: Ms.S knew about damage --> Ms. S should pay

Since this is a sufficient assumption, we are looking to absolutely prove that Ms. S should pay.

Now, you're right that generally, you don't want to choose an answer choice for sufficient assumption that just repeats the premises. However, the conclusion is not a premise. The premises must always be treated as true, but the conclusion doesn't have to be -- after all, we are constantly looking for flaws and loopholes, right?

The conditional statement in this conclusion seems like it came out of nowhere and introduced two new ideas: that Ms. S should pay for the damage and that she could have reasonably expected the damage.

The missing link is that we don't actually have a rule to make sure that Ms. S should pay for the damages. Where in the premises does it mention that she needs to pay? That's where A comes in.

So with A,

• Premise: Ms. S wrote article, people damaged Mendel's stuff bc of article

• A: you knew you'd cause others to damage --> you should pay

• Conclusion: Ms.S knew she'd cause others to damage --> Ms. S should pay

It's not restating the conclusion, it's giving the framework for the conclusion to be true.

With D:

• Premise: Ms. S wrote article, people damaged Mendel's stuff bc of article

• Ms. Sandstrom knew that her column could incite trespassing that could result in damage to the Mendels' farm.

• Conclusion: Ms.S knew about damage --> Ms. S should pay

But why should she pay? Even if she knew, the laws in that county might be that even if you knew that something you did caused other people to damage stuff, you wouldn't be liable. So she shouldn't pay. D just gives us an extra premise that doesn't help the conclusion.

Q: Based on the passage, with which one of the following statements would the author be most likely to agree?

A: Author never mentions that blues is in the realm of organized religion.

B: We don't know anything about modern blues.

C: We have no idea what the author thinks of other forms of African American art.

D: This is a really strong answer choice. It's a trap because I think we are looking for something about how blues music transcends negative experiences and this one seems perfect. BUT we don't know that the author thinks that the musical structure is the PRIMARY way that blues music provides this tension. It could be in the lyricism, etc.

E: The author mentions that "blues songs serve to transcend negative experiences by invoking the negative so that it can be transformed through the virtuosity and ecstatic mastery of the performer." So by transcending (going beyond) the negative experience, the listener might feel better, a psychological benefit. The rest of the paragraph talks about using sorrow and irony to "keep painful experiences alive" to "coax from these experiences a lyricism that is both tragic and comic".

Stim:

• Research study

• Toddlers asked to sort by shape? no problem!

• Toddlers asked to sort by color? problem! they can't follow new rule and reverted back to sorting by shape

• Researchers think the toddles had trouble with the new rule because of an undeveloped prefrontal cortex

• prefrontal cortex:

  • important for new rules

  • develops slowly (until they are teenagers)

A: Unsupported. We know that most toddlers are able to sort by color but we don't know anything about the toddlers that aren't able to sort by color. (Got this wrong since I missed the word color)

B: Unsupported, too strong.

C: Strongly supported. When the toddlers had difficulty following the directions with sorting colors, they broke the rule and started sorting by shapes instead. The researcher's theory on the undeveloped prefrontal cortex.

D: Unsupported. We don't really know anything about anything about nature vs. nurture in development of adaptive behaviour.

E: Unsupported. We don't know anything about the relationship between development of the prefrontal cortex and adaptive skills, especially no evidence to support a strong statement indicating a "roughly proportional relationship"

Argument:

• You can never tell if someone has an ulterior motive

• SO: you don't know if someone's actions are moral

• THEREFORE: you should evaluate consequences of action versus morality

A: This means "you need to know the intention of the action to know if it is moral".

This fits because it bridges the gap between a premise and the intermediate conclusion: "you can never tell if someone has an ulterior motives" and "you don't know if someone's actions are moral".

B: Assigning praise/blame is irrelevant.

C: Knowing one's own motives doesn't help understand someone else's motives.

D: Irrelevant.

E: know acted morally --> consequences of actions

This is the wrong trigger. We are looking for reasons to evaluate the consequences of actions versus the morality. BUT the premise says we don't know if someone is acting morally. But this conditional needs us to know that someone is acting morally to trigger. Also, it gets us to the wrong conclusion: we aren't looking to know the consequences of the actions, we are looking to evaluate the consequences of the actions.

Argument:

• We don't know why people purchased broadsides or their own beliefs in relation to broadsides

• Conclusion: Broadsides being about moral values doesn't mean the people who read them in the 17th century were serious about moral values

Pre-suppose:

Strengthening argument.

We need to show that people purchasing or reading broadsides doesn't show those people being serious about their own moral values.

A: "Surviving broadsides" seems to indicate a bias -- how do we know that the ones that survived are representative of the 17th century broadsides as a whole?

Also, we don't care about literary quality of the broadsides. They can have high literary quality or low literary quality, it doesn't diminish the relationship between the moral values of the people who bought the broadsides and the moral values of the broadsides.

B: This shows that the moral values part of the content is a relatively small part of the broadside with an alternative explanaton as to why someone would buy a broadside: the sensationalized story of crime and adultery.

C: Irrelevant.

D: Irrelevant.

E: So this subset of people could have held broadsides in contempt but that doesn't mean other people ("most seventeenth-century people") didn't buy them.

Which one of the following, if true, would most support the author's contentions concerning the conditions under which groupthink takes place?

Pre-suppose:

Well, what are the conditions?

Cohesiveness of the decision-making group is an essential antecedent condition for this syndrome but not a sufficient one

So we know cohensiveness is necessary for groupthink so we are looking for an answer choice that shows a situation where there is cohesiveness and groupthink.

A: Doesn't demonstrate that there's groupthink in these groups or cohensiveness.

B: We don't know the relationship between dissent and groupthink.

C: If the groups have members that generally distrust one another's judgement, this means it is not a cohesive group. In this example, there's no cohension and there's no groupthink.

/cohesion --> /groupthink

So, the contrapositive: groupthink --> cohension

D: This means that there's evidence that groupthink is likely to take place when members of a group make little groups inside the group and their refusal to change their minds prolongs the decision making process. Ok, if there's factions, that would suggest low cohesion. So. that doesn't help the contention.

E: Voluntary deference to group opinion doesn't necessarily mean there's high or low cohension.

@EmilyBradshaw sure! DM me with your availability and we can set something up :)

Question: Each of the following is supported by one or both of the passages EXCEPT:

A: This answer choice is weak enough to be provable. From the passages, we know from passage A:

Drilling muds are made of bentonite and other clays and polymers

and from passage B:

One type of mud—water-based mud (WBM)—is a mixture of water, bentonite clay, and chemical additives

B: Also weak enough to be provable. We know from passage B, WBM mud is

...not particularly toxic to marine organisms and disperses readily.

C: Weak enough to be provable! We know from passage B, the discharges from the drilling muds:

are the main environmental concern in offshore oil production

D: We know from passage B that OBM:

high content of mineral oil (typically 30 percent)

We also know that:

For drilling deeper wells, oil-based mud (OBM) is normally used.

So, if it's normally used for the deeper wells, we can assume that government regulations allow this to happen.

E: We don't have enough proof for this! We know from passage B about WBM:

Under current regulations, it can be dumped directly overboard. Companies typically recycle WBMs until their properties are no longer suitable and then, over a period of hours, dump the entire batch into the sea.

But do we know that it's continuously discharged? No, we don't know that during the entire time they are drillling, they are, without break, dumping drilling mud into the sea.

Question: A primary purpose of each of the passages is to:

Pre-suppose: We are looking for a primary purpose, not the primary purpose. Some purposes of A is to explain what drilling fluids are and describe a potential problem with studying drilling fluids. Some purposes of passage B is to explain the use of drilling fluids are and the composition of different types, and relate them to the environmental impact.

A: While B does explain about the environmental impacts of the drilling muds, A doesn't go into the environmental impacts of drilling muds at all.

B: Yes! Passage A explains what drilling fluids are and goes into detail about the composition of drilling muds and their properties. Passage B also goes into the composition and properties of drilling muds in order to show the environmental impacts.

C: A doesn't talk about environmental impacts, whereas B does.

D: While A goes into detail about the purpose of drilling muds in the first paragraph, B doesn't mention why they are used.

E: While A does touch on the difficulties with studying the effects, it doesn't go into regulation of oil-well drilling. B mentions regulation of drilling mud dumping but doesn't go into the difficulties.

@alexandraganim DM me your availability and we can set something up :)

Stim:

• Poll of eligible voters done night before the election

• Poll results: voters favored Panitch more than any other candidate

• But Yeung defeated Panitch by a comfortable margin

Pre-suppose:

• Mystery: Why did Panitch lose if the poll results from the night before the election showed that more people prefer Panitch?

A: The fact that more of Panitch supporters can vote adds to the mystery as to why Panitch didn't win. So this is our answer!

B: It's possible everyone who were going to vote for Mulhern changed their vote to Yeung after Mulhern dropped out.

C: It's possible the questions are biased! That would mean that the results are biased towards Panitch.

D: If Yeung voters generally thought that the election was more important than the Panitch voters, then it's possible the Panitch voters didn't end up voting at all!

E: This would mean that the poll results have a sampling bias skewed towards Panitch.

@faizcon I think there's a difference between what people know and how they act. It's telling that answer choice D is a relatively weak answer choice.

unethical --> there is a possibility that someone will act as if the claim might be true

Notice that the necessary condition is based on how someone will act if the claim MIGHT be true. We know from the stim that "everyone knows that no book can deliver to the many what, by definition, must remain limited to the few". But there's a difference between knowing something and acting on something as if the claim MIGHT be true. For example, you might know that self-help books are scams but you might still buy one and follow its advice on the slim chance that it might work.

Hope that helps!

Argument:

• Publisher of self-help book: I can show you how to be really successful!

• But everyone knows: no book can give many people success since big success is accessible to a few people

• C: Even though the publisher made a false claim, it should not be considered unethical

Pre-suppose:

• Principle question

• Prediction: Since everyone knows that this claim can't be realized through this book, it should not be considered unethical

A: Works with the contrapositive. Since many people won't reasonably see the publisher's claim as true/realistic, then it wouldn't be unethical for the publisher to claim this.

unethical --> reasonable for ppl to accept claim as true

/reasonable for ppl to accept claim as true --> /unethical

B: We have no reason to believe the publishers derived a gain. Nor do we need evidence of gains. We are strictly talking about the ethics of making claims in relation to popular opinions about certain claims.

derive gain at expense --> unethical

C: This AC doesn't prove /unethical and we have no evidence about suffering people who accepted claim as true.

unethical --> people that accept claim suffer

D: We would need to show that there's no chance of someone acting as if they perceive the claim as true. The stim tells us what people know but not how they act.

unethical --> someone will act if claim is true

E: Shows something is unethical but doesn't help prove something is not unethical.

Argument:

• Moral order = bad punished, humans rewarded

• Moral order --> humans souls being immortal

• [Examples of moral order in different cultures]

• C: human souls immortal --> bad will be punished (Moral order)

Pre-suppose:

• Necessity/sufficiency error

A: Yes, exactly.

B: Beliefs aren't claimed to be true. The author's conclusion is based on logical relationships.

C: Opposite of what we want. This answer choice claims:

P: human souls immortal --> moral order

C: moral order --> human souls immortal

But this is the opposite of what the argument is doing.

D: No, the argument doesn't say that the two cultural beliefs about moral order is the same since the conclusion states "...however a moral order is represented..." So it doesn't matter which cultural representation of moral order is used.

E: No, the author doesn't claim from "Moral order --> humans souls being immortal" that "Moral order --> humans souls being immortal". That would be circular reasoning.

Argument:

• Past 5 years: # of ppl of driving age has increased but traffic fatalities declined

• Conclusion: Driving population has more skilled drivers now than 5 yrs ago

A: Weakens. The seat-belt law serves as an alternative explanation.

B: Weakens. Road repairs means safer roads and less accidents . Alternative explanation.

C: Weakens. Less driving ==> less chances of accidents.

D: Weakens. More emergency facilities ==> easier to get medical care. Alternative explanation for less trafic fatalities. It could be that the number of accidents is the same or more, but the number of people dying is less since they can get to a hospital. (I misread this AC the first time as "hospital emergency fatalities".)

E: Strengthens. If there is a mandatory driver's program that is helping people be more skilled at driving, then the conclusion of more skillful drivers on the road is upheld.

Stim

• Steven: Current blood-alcohol level should be halved to deter social drinkers from drinking and drinking and therefore, make highways safer.

• Miguel: Halving the blood-alchohol limit will have little effect on making highways safer. It doesn't address the bigger issue: heavy drinkers are a danger to the public and they drive while drunk x2 legal limit.

Pre-suppose

• Looking for the point of disagreement.

• Steven wants to target social drinkers but Miguel says heavy drinkers are the problem

A: Makes sense! Steven thinks that social drinkers are a substantial threat to the public since halving the BA level will lead to significant highway safety improvements. But Miguel doesn't think Steven's proposal will work because Miguel doesn't think that the social drinkers are the problem, the heavy drinkers are.

B: Neither speaker directly says this but given how they are relying on the BA level to determine how is safe to drive, they might think this or think there is another relationship.

C: Agreement. Steven thinks that the limit is too high and thinks it needs to be lower. Miguel thinks the heavy drinkers x2 above the legal limit are dangerious.

D: Steven believes this but we don't know that Miguel does.

E: We don't know anything about drinkers who pose no danger to the public.

Argument:

• Claim: there is a large number of violent crimes in our society

• Conclusion: Claim is false; there isn't a large number of violent crimes

• Why?

  • Claim based on large number of stories in newspapers about violent crimes

  • Violent crimes are rare

  • So, newspapers more likely to print stories about them

Pre-suppose:

• Loophole: What if the number of violent crimes corresponds to the number of newspaper stories about them?

• The conclusion is "there isn't a large number of violent crimes" and one of the premises is "violent crimes are rare"

A: Author doesn't suppose anything about most of the newspaper stories. Even if this was true, it doesn't matter if most of the newspaper stories are about violent crime or there are many newspaper stories about violent crime.

B: Circular reasoning!

C: How the newspaper coverage is biased or unbiased is irrelevant.

D: Part-to-whole flaw, not what is going on.

E: No comparison between past and future occurances of violent crime.

Argument:

• Conclusion: wrong to argue that one is morally obligated to act some way because it is unnatural not to do it

• Why?

  • Acting unnatural way is either: (1) violates law of nature and (2) statistical outlier

  • (1) is impossible

  • (2) just because something isn't normally done, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it

A: So, the author does talk about how if you do something unnatural, you are violating a law of nature. But the author isn't saying that by accepting the definition, you're violating these laws. He's trying to show that the argument is absurd since using the definition of the word "unnatural" leads to absurd conclusions.

B: Yes, the author defines the term "unnatural"

C: No stats here

D: No claims are self-contradictory

E: No empirical evidence used

Argument:

• intelligent --> nearsighted

• I am nearsighted

• C: I am genius!

Pre-suppose:

• sufficiency/necessity error

• intelligent =/= genius

A: No flaws.

• intelligent --> nearsighted

• I am /nearsighted

• Conclusion: I am /intelligent

B: Only one of the flaws!

• chickens --> beaks

• bird: has beak

• Conclusion: bird: chicken

C: Wrong flaw.

• pigs --> 4 legs

• spider: 8 legs

• Conclusion: spider x2 big as any pig

D: Both flaws!

• tall --> happy

• John: extremely happy

• Conclusion - John: extremely tall

E: No flaws!

• genius --> very nearsighted

• I am genius

• Conclusion - I am very nearsighted

Argument:

• Many ppl believe: motivated by good --> crime mitigated

• Ok, some criminals with good motivations should have mitigated punishments

• BUT judges should never mitigate punishments because of motives

• Why?

  • motives are based on conjecture (incomplete information)

  • even the worst motives can be shown to be done with good motivations

Pre-suppose:

• Looking for the principle to validate this, so a strong answer to close any gaps in reasoning.

A: Physiological states are irrelevant.

B: Correct! I did this by process of elimination.

"Mitigating punishment" is essentially being more lenient on punishment. The argument says that judges shouldn't be more lenient on criminals because of their motives since motives are incomplete and spin-able. So to bridge the gap between being more lenient and being more severe, this principle says it's always better to be more severe.

C: Legal permissibility is irrelevant.

D: Nothing to suggest that the law cannot be enforced.

E: Legal systems are irrelevant here.

Argument:

• /good understanding of social impact --> /introduce into marketplace

• New histamine --> /good understanding of social impact --> /introduce into marketplace

• C: General reduction in pace of bringing to market new drugs

Pre-suppose:

• Specific example --> general conclusion

• Strengthening needs to show that it is widespread enough to warrant general conclusion

A: This is a tricky answer but if the new antihistamine is better understood than most of the new drugs being tested, then that means these new drugs are even WORSE! Then it would make sense that the general reduction is needed for all these drugs.

B: This is a really weak answer but I think it's tricky because it's allllllmost what we want. If only some of the new drugs are poorly understood, why would we want a general reduction in pace? Some could be 1 or 2.

C: Weak answer choice. Economic success is irrelevant.

D: Really weak answer choice AND irrelevant.

E: antihistamine on market --> most new drugs are on the market

We know that the antihistamine is already on the market. So, it would mean that most new drugs should be on the market. But this is the opposite of the conclusion.

Argument:

• Asteroid crater is not big enough for its dust to block the sun

• Also, extinction of the dinos took several years

• C: Extinction must have not been due to asteroids but something else

Pre-suppose:

• Trent assumes that the asteroid didn't cause extinction through anything else other than dust. The asteroid could have caused earthquakes, etc.

• Trent assumes that the dust theory requires 1-2 years to cause extinction, not long enough

A: Irrelevant.

B: Irrelevant if we are talking about widespread exintinction.

C: Wayyy too extreme for a necessary assumption.

D: Too extreme. It could have had a cooling effect but not enough to cause extinction.

E: This eliminates an alternative explanation! Trent assumes that the dust from one asteroid isn't enough to cause dino extinctions, but could dust from multiple asteroids cause enough dust clouds to block the sun's ray? Maybe.

Argument:

• P: Political regimes that censor things expand their censorship categories to include criticism that they think threaten their power

• C: Many totalitarian regimes expand censorship to writings that reduce public passivity if the writings are popular.

Pre-suppose:

• The argument goes from political regimes in general to specifically totalitarian regimes. Are totalitarian regimes under the umbrella of "political regimes that routinely censor"?

• What is the relationship between public passivity and threats to political power?

• Is "classifying something as blasphemous or pornographic" a way of "expanding categories of proscibed expression"?

A: Irrelevant.

B: Irrelevant. It could be true while many totalitarian regimes continue to censor things.

C: Correct!

• Neg test: A totalitarian regime won't perceive loss of public passivity as a threat to its power.

  • So if it doesn't see it as a threat, why is the regime censoring it? This breaks the conclusion.

D:

• Neg test: Widespread public passivity never needed for a regime to retain political power.

  • This is irrelevant! Even if widespread public passibity isn't needed to retain political power, the conclusion would not be changed since the argument is about what regimes do in response to threats to their power.

E: Irrelevant.

Argument:

• human intelligence --> human emotions

• computer --> /have emotions

• C: computer --> /display intelligence

Pre-suppose: The author goes from making a claim about humans to making a conclusion about computers. We need a more general claim about the relationship between the intelligence of computers and the emotions.

A: have emotions --> display intelligence

This is the opposite of what we are looking for.

B: Tricky trap answer!

• Neg test: Computer technology will greatly advance beyond its current state.

  • This could be true and the conclusion will still be that computers will never be ble to display intelligence. Why? Because we can't go against one of our premises, that computers can never have emotions. So, despite what the advances in computer technology is, the advances can never give the computers emotions.

C: intelligence --> identify emotions

Identifying emotions is irrelevant in this case.

D: Irrelevant comparative statement.

E: intelligent --> emotions

This bridges the gap between human intelligence and intelligence in general (aka whatever the intelligence a computer could theoretically have). The contrapositive is:

/emotions --> /intelligence

Therefore, the claim that computers can never have emotions is enough to guarantee that the computer will never be able to display intelligence.

The author mentions that the LHB "should also have struck Earth" primarily to:

A: Unsupported. This claim doesn't lean towards a particular theory.

B: Unsupported. Nothing is mentioned about lack of evidence on Earth.

C: Unsupported. It's not saying, "Oh, since the bombardment should have struck Earth which influences when life could have survived on Earth, this supports [theory]"

D: Providing a purpose for why scientists care about this phenomenon makes sense. If they figure out the extent of the LHB, they know more about the history of life on Earth.

E: This is a trap answer, I got it the first time. It's wrong because they are not using the fact that life couldn't have survived during the LHB to figure out when the LHB occured. If they said something more like "Since life arose on Earth [x] billion years ago and life couldn't have survived LHB, we theorize LBH occured more than [x] billion years ago", then there is more reason to believe that this answer choice is correct.