Self-study
Support Domestication of animals is a cooperative activity, and Support cooperative activities require a sophisticated means of communication. ████████ ████████ ████ ████ █ ██████ ██ ██ ███████ ██████████ ████ ████████ █████████ █████████ ██ ██████████ ██████ ██████████████
Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author concludes that people’s desire to domesticate animals caused them to develop language. Her premise is that cooperative activities like animal domestication require a sophisticated means of communication such as language.
Identify and Describe Flaw
This is a “correlation doesn’t imply causation” flaw, where the author sees a correlation and concludes that one thing caused the other without ruling out alternative hypotheses. Specifically, she overlooks two key alternatives:
(1) The causal relationship could be reversed—maybe people only thought of domesticating animals because they had developed language and could collectively brainstorm ways to make life easier!
(2) Some other factor could be causing the correlation—maybe human brains had developed to the point where animal domestication and language development were both possible for the first time!
2.
A flaw in the argument ██ ████ ███ ████████
a
conflates being necessary ███ ███ ███████████ ██ █ ██████████ ████ ████████████ ███ ███████████ ██ ████ ██████████
The author doesn’t say that language is necessary for animal domestication. Rather, she claims that a sophisticated mean of communication is necessary, and language is one example of such. Further, the author doesn’t argue that language guarantees the domestication of animals.
b
takes for granted ████ █████ ██████████ ███ █ ██████ █████
The author makes no general claims about the causes of all phenomenons. She also doesn’t even argue that language developed as the result of a unique cause—she just says animal domestication was the primary one!
c
infers that the ███████████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██████ ███ ███████████ ██ ███████ ██████ ███████ ███ ███ █████████ █████████ ██████ ███ ████ ████
The author doesn’t use temporal proximity as a premise in her argument—she doesn’t even explicitly state that language and animal domestication developed around the same time!
d
draws a conclusion ████ ██████ ████████ █ █████ █████████ ██ ███████ ██ ████ ██████████
The author’s conclusion (that language developed primarily to facilitate animal domestication) is different from her premises (that animal domestication is cooperative and cooperative activities require sophisticated means of communication like language).
e
assumes that if █████████ ██████ █ ███████ ██ ████ ████ █████████ ██ █████ ██ █████ ████ ███████
This is a correlation/causation flaw. The author assumes that, because language provided the sophisticated means of communication required to domesticate animals, the desire for animal domestication caused language development. Maybe language developed for another reason!