Argument by Analogy

shegotit

Can someone explain this theory? These are the notes that I have taken based off the webinar video
Strengthen: Answer choices introduce the additional areas of key similarties
Weakening: Answer choices introduce key areas of dissimilarities
" The similarity vs. dissimilarity" is throwing me off.

University Administrator: Graduate students incorrectly claim that teaching assistants should be considered university employees and thus entitled to the usual employee benefits. Granted, teaching assistants teach classes, for which they receive financial compensation. However, the sole purpose of having teaching assistants perform services for the university is to enable them to fund their education. If they were not pushing degrees here or if they could otherwise fund their education, they would not hold their teaching posts at all.

This is a weakening question.

A. The administrator is cognizant of the extra costs involved in granting employee benefits to teaching assistants.
B. The university employs adjunct instructors who receive compensation similar to that of its teaching assistants.
C. The university has proposed that in the interest of economy, 10 percent of the faculty be replaced with teaching assistants.
D. Most teaching assistants earn stipends that exceed their cost of tuition.
E. Teaching assistants work as much and hard as hard as do other university employees. ( I thought E was the answer because its proving how hard teacher assistants work so therefore they should receive other benefits but I guess I can see how the administrator never said that they did not work hard.)

Nicole said that C was the answer because they are so similar that they are interchangeable and this is where I got confused. I thought that with weakening questions you had to pick answers that were different from what the conclusion was saying. How does this answer weaken the argument. I think that I am struggling with reading the answer choices incorrectly. Are there any tips that you guys could provide that will aide me with this problem?

JustDoIt

they are so similar that they are interchangeable

I think the confusion here is with the word "they." They is actually referring to the similarities between graduate students and teaching assistants. C weakens the argument because it demonstrates that teaching assistants do more than teach simply to fund their education. The university administrator even goes as far to claim that they wouldn't even be teaching if they didn't get paid. Well, University Administrator, why would the university propose that we replace faculty with teaching assistants if they weren't good teachers? Or as the argument says, simply here to fund their education...

I strongly recommend that you don't use that webinar. I tried to and did not find it helpful at all. In fact, it is super counter-intuitive. Maybe it was intuitive for her, but it was counter-intuitive for me. In order to get good at this test, you have to think about things in an intuitive way and if it is not intuitive for you then I would recommend you drop it. For example, we don't need to think about something that weakens because of dissimilarity or whatever. It can weaken because it weakens, aka it weakens because it lessens the support to conclusion by the premises.

ebalde1234

@JustDoIt said:

they are so similar that they are interchangeable

I think the confusion here is with the word "they." They is actually referring to the similarities between graduate students and teaching assistants. C weakens the argument because it demonstrates that teaching assistants do more than teach simply to fund their education. The university administrator even goes as far to claim that they wouldn't even be teaching if they didn't get paid. Well, University Administrator, why would the university propose that we replace faculty with teaching assistants if they weren't good teachers? Or as the argument says, simply here to fund their education...

I strongly recommend that you don't use that webinar. I tried to and did not find it helpful at all. In fact, it is super counter-intuitive. Maybe it was intuitive for her, but it was counter-intuitive for me. In order to get good at this test, you have to think about things in an intuitive way and if it is not intuitive for you then I would recommend you drop it. For example, we don't need to think about something that weakens because of dissimilarity or whatever. It can weaken because it weakens, aka it weakens because it lessens the support to conclusion by the premises.

Yes to this ; you are going to get yourself confused. Reading the terminology used to explain s/w questions threw me off . Strengthen - reaffirm (the beam gets thicker ) in terms of support , for weaken you want to exploit gaps between the premise and the conclusion (often there is an alternative cause that the argument doesn’t account for ) all from the cc . Think of it like a bridge ; weaken - weaken the support( breaking the gap from point a to b ) - strengthen - strengthen the support (bridging the gap from point a to b )

shegotit

Thank you guys for your input and I am going to stop watching it. @JustDoIt your explanation with the answer choice actually made sense and it helped me and it was straight to the point it was like one of those aha moments! Do you guys happen to have notes on the strengthening and weakening questions? Also can you explain to me what it means to block the alternative....that really throws me off.