Question about contrapositive (PT 62 LR1 Q23)

[Deleted User]

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[Deleted User]

cmon 7sagers. I need your advice.

David Wayne

We know the conclusion is that the practice is unacceptable. Our premises indicate that a segment of the population is at risk of harm from the use of the pesticide. The principle we need - and the unstated assumption underlying this argument's line of reasoning - must show that if a portion of our population is at risk of harm from a practice, then the practice itself is therefore not acceptable.

On more difficult PSA questions the sufficient condition will be difficult to link up to the premises in our argument. In this case, the trigger C presents is as follows:

(not) not shown to harm any portion of the population.

In other words, it has not been shown that this practice will not harm any portion of the population. That's not necessarily the same thing as shown to harm the population. It just means that the practice hasn't been shown to be safe. That idea casts a wide enough net to encompass the premises (namely, that the pesticide might be harmful) and so C acts as the pseudo sufficient assumption.

What may be difficult here are the differences between the premises and the ideas in C's sufficient condition. But as a PSA question, the sufficient condition of the conditional statement in our answer choice has a chance of casting an especially wide net, so wide that it encompasses much more than what we needed to cover. C's conditional statement covers the idea of not having been shown to not harm any portion of the population.

Be careful with double negatives, as your sufficient condition of C's contrapositive was what may have confused you.