PT129.S3.Q8 > Question

SECTION 1 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 2 · lr

SECTION 3 · lr

SECTION 4 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5

PASSAGE 2

Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12

PASSAGE 3

Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19

PASSAGE 4

Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26 Question 27

The council member concludes that to prevent anarchy, the council must deny the Senior Guild’s request for an exception. As support, he says that granting this exception would lead to other, undeserved exceptions and eventually to exceptions to all kinds of city ordinances.

The council member’s argument is vulnerable to criticism because he never provides evidence to support the key assumption that granting the Senior Guild’s exception would inevitably cause the council to grant undeserved exceptions to all kinds of city ordinances. Similarly, he never gives reason to believe that granting the request would cause anarchy.

The council member never attacks, distorts, or even presents any argument made by the Senior Guild. Instead, he presents his own argument for why the Guild’s exception should be denied.

This is the cookie-cutter “ad hominem” flaw. The council member doesn’t make this mistake. He argues that the Guild’s request should be denied, but he doesn’t do so by attacking the Guild itself. In fact, he concedes that the Guild deserves this exception.

The council member assumes that granting the Senior Guild’s exception will lead to a particular causal sequence of events— all manner of other exceptions and anarchy. But he doesn't offer any reason to think that one will actually cause the other.

The council member’s premises may not support his conclusion well, but they never contradict one another.

The council member actually does distinguish between undeserved and deserved exceptions by pointing out that the Senior Guild’s exception is deserved, while some others are not. He just fails to take that distinction into consideration in his argument.

PrepTest 129 - Section 3 - Question 8

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