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NA question types
emli1000
Alum Member Inactive ⭐
I was wondering if anyone has found a way that works best to approach these question types? If so, PLEASE share.
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*where friends are question types. not ... human friends.
oh yeah also maybe go to law school sometime. I forget about that part.
http://7sage.com/lesson/protein-drinks-na-question/?ss_completed_lesson=1795
I had the hardest time with the above question (protein drinks). The answer is C, but is it because it basically says engineered food do no good so there is no good reason to take it. Is it right because it is just repeating that Athletes shouldn't consume what is no good for muscle ?
How do you approach these nasty annoying necessary assumption questions? What do you look for ?
Generally speaking, let's say you have an argument A (main premise) --> C (main conclusion). There's also an assumption that leads connects A --> C, which I will call B. So your argument looks like this: A --( B ) --> C. A necessary assumption will either be B --> C (most common) or A --> C. These things HAVE to be true or else the entire argument falls apart. In the diagram, if B --> /C, then how could we have an argument that says B --> C? I then look for an answer choice that has one of the causal linkages and verify that it is correct using the negation test.
I know this might sound like gibberish so let's see this in practice (J2007, 3, 9):
STEP 1: Identify main conclusion, premise, and assumption
Main Conclusion: Tasmanian tiger does not exist (WHY?)
Main Premises: No more natural habitat + no sightings
STEP 2: Write out argument Core
No natural habitat + no sighting --> no more tiger
In simple logic terms: A + B --> C
STEP 3: Determine the assumption
In this question, the necessary assumption is fairly straightforward. It will have to be either A --> C or B --> C. Translating this back into normal language, either:
A --> C: no more natural habitat means that there is no more tiger OR
B --> C: no sighting means there can't be any tiger
STEP 4: Go through answer choice
In real time, I knew D was the answer I was looking for because it is a translation of A --> C but let's do the actual breakdown since it's good practice.
(A) premise booster: explains why there is no habitat but doesn't tell us anything about the connection between lack of no habitat and having no tiger
(B) premise booster: explains why there is no sighting of tiger carcasses but again, this doesn't tell us about the connection between lack of sightings and there being no more Tasmanian tigers
(C) detail creep/premise booster: it gives us additional information for why the fact that there are no sightings of the tiger be reliable but again, it doesn't get at the core argument which is: if there is no habitat and no sightings, does that mean it MUST be there are no tigers.
(D) DING DING DING! This is A --> C. This tells us that no habitat MUST mean there can't be a tiger. Why? Because these tigers can't live anywhere else. If we use the negation test, does this destroy the argument? Absolutely.
NT: The Tasmanian tiger DID move and adapt to a different region in response to the loss of habitat.
If this is true, then that means you can have A be true (no more natural habitat) but still arrive at the opposite conclusion (that the tigers actually can exist).
(E) ad hominem: attacks the source of the supposed counter-evidence
I hope this helps. Also, if you have more NA questions that you'd like to see diagrammed out, let me know. If this makes no sense, I'm sorry
With Necessary Assumption questions, I found that I am linking things but typically linking the term or assumption to the conclusion, so it looks a bit different. For instance, in the example that I gave above, I know that a correct NA answer choice could either be A --> C (no habitat means no tiger) OR B --> C (no sighting means no tiger). An SA answer choice would have to be both A --> AND B--> C.
I'm not sure if that makes a lot of sense or if I just ended up confusing you haha. I also found that the arguments given for NA and SA questions tend to look fairly different so I haven't really run into the problem of getting confused. If you have a troublesome NA question in mind, I can try breaking it apart to better elucidate my point.
Does that make sense? This is all Trainer-based formulation.
Step 1: Identify the conclusion
"justice is not ensured"
Step 2: Why is this the case? (aka what's the major premise)
"most citizens lack knowledge"
This to me is what I call a classic "P" to "C" linkage NA problem. In simple terms, it means that, for this argument to hold true, P (the premise) actually has to have some affect on C (the conclusion). In our case, it HAS to be the case that knowledge has some affect on ensuring justice. If this is not true, then our entire argument falls apart because then we get: "most citizens lack knowledge" BUT "we can still have justice."
Step 3: ID the P to C link in the answer choice
This is how we get to (E). (E) is the answer choice we expect: knowledge (or lack of knowledge) impacts whether we can have a fair justice system. At first, I was thinking, "wait, criticizing experts?" That seems out of scope. But then I remembered that this is part of the conditional "ensure justice --> criticize experts" (contrapositive: no criticism --> no justice) so if we carry the (E) to its furthest logical conclusion, we get "citizens without knowledge of the legal system's punishments prevents justice from being ensured" (or something like that).
Step 4: Confirm the right answer by eliminating the wrong ones
A , B, C, D can all be found wrong because they don't have anything to do with the main argument (knowledge impacts the fairness of a justice system).
(A) "primary concern" -- we don't care about the primary concern, we care about what is necessary for justice to exist. Primary concern and people's view of justice don't tell us anything about what is necessary for justice.
(B) this is out of scope. B creates a condition "just --> effect of punishment" when the condition given to us in the stimulus is "just --> criticism")
(C) "primary concern" -- See A
(D) is wrong for all kinds of reasons. (1) why does it matter if a concern for punishment is incompatible with an emphasis on deterrence? What effect does this have on ensuring a just system? But (2), even if we say that deterrence does have an effect on the justness of a system, "concern for punishment" is not the same thing as the ability to criticize those who are involved in determining punishment: criticism, not concern, is what allows us to draw conclusions about whether or not justice can be ensured.
Does this help?
“primary concern” when dealing with NA is very interesting concept that I have not thought about. Are you saying that the primary concern isn’t the necessary concern?
Also, I kept thinking that (E) was a Sufficient Assumption too. Am I right about that?
Shoot. Yes, I totally talked myself into (C) because (E) felt too perfect (again, I have this fear of choosing a sufficient assumption when they want a necessary assumption) during Blind Review. I chose (E) during the test but it’s amazing how you can quadruple-guess yourself.