Support Kennel club members who frequently discipline their dogs report a higher incidence of misbehavior than do members who rarely or never discipline their dogs. ██ ███ ████████ ████ ████ ████ ██████████ ████ ███ ███████ █████ █████████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ██████████ ████████████
The argument concludes that discipline encourages misbehavior in dogs. This is supported by an observed correlation: dogs who are frequently disciplined misbehave more often than dogs who are rarely disciplined.
Based on a correlation between discipline and misbehavior, the argument concludes that discipline causes misbehavior. However, this overlooks an alternative explanation: the possibility that misbehavior causes discipline. If a dog misbehaves a lot, its owner might react by disciplining it more often than they would discipline a dog that rarely misbehaves.
The argument is flawed in ████ ██ █████ ██ ████████ ███ ███████████ ████
dogs' misbehavior is ███ █████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ██████ ███ ████████ ██████████
The argument assumes a causal relationship between misbehavior and discipline where discipline causes misbehavior. But this overlooks a more plausible alternative: frequent misbehavior prompts—in other words, causes—frequent discipline.
dogs learn from ████ ██████████ ███ █████ ██████ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ██ ███████████
Whether or not dogs learn how their owners will react to misbehavior isn’t relevant to the argument. The argument is about causally explaining a correlation between discipline and misbehavior, not about the exact mechanism for that relationship.
discipline does not █████ ███████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███████ █████ ████ ████
The argument only considers dogs, so other animals aren’t relevant.
kennel club members ████ ██ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ███████ ████ ████ ███ █████ ███ ██████
The argument doesn’t make any claims about the skill of kennel club members in raising dogs relative to other dog owners.
kennel club members ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████ ███ █████ ███ ██████
It doesn’t matter to the argument whether kennel club members are more likely to use discipline, only that members who do use discipline often tend to have worse-behaved dogs.
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