Professor: The best users of a language are its great authors. However, these authors often use language in ways that are innovative and idiosyncratic, and are therefore less respectful of the strictures of proper usage than most of us are.
Summary
Great authors are the best users of a language. These authors use language in new and unique ways, and so use language in ways that conform less to proper usage rules than others.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
Conforming to rules of proper language usage is not necessary to be a great author.
Innovative and unique uses of language are inconsistent with complete adherence to the rules of proper language usage.
A
People who want to become great writers should not imitate great authors’ use of language.
Unsupported. The way great authors use language might contribute to the quality of their writing. So, there’s no support for a recommendation not to copy great authors’ use of writing.
B
Writers who do not observe proper language usage risk developing a peculiar or idiosyncratic style.
Unsupported. The vast majority of failures to observe proper language usage may involve standard, common errors. Although great writers often have a unique style, this doesn’t mean such style results from failure to observe proper language usage.
C
Those most talented at using a language are not as likely as most other people to observe proper language usage.
Strongly supported. The stimulus tells us that the best users of a language are great authors, who often use language in new and unique ways, which means they do not respect proper language usage as much as most other people.
D
People who use an innovative or idiosyncratic writing style often incur criticism of their language usage.
Unsupported. The stimulus doesn’t tell us whether new and unique writing styles incur criticism. The mere fact that such styles involve failure to observe proper language usage doesn’t imply that anyone criticizes the styles for the way they use language.
E
The standard for what constitutes proper language usage should be set by the best users of a language.
Unsupported. The stimulus doesn’t support any prescriptive claim about how standards “should” (or should not) be set.
Understanding human action→ Know its goal
The contrapositive of the relationship is:
/Know the goal of an action→ /Understand human action
When taken with the assumption that we don’t know the goal of an action when we predict it, we reach the conclusion that predicting human behavior does not come with an understanding of the behavior.
A
Successful predictions of human behavior do not constitute an understanding of that behavior.
B
One cannot predict an instance of human behavior without an understanding of the agent’s purpose in engaging in that behavior.
The contrapositive is:
Predict the behavior→Understand the agent’s purpose
This claim is a contradiction of the claims made in the argument, so it is not the conclusion.
C
In some cases, but not in others, understanding an event consists in the ability to predict the occurrence of that event.
D
The goal of the physical sciences is to predict the order in which events will occur.
E
The methods used to predict human behavior must involve reference to the psychological states of human agents.
A
Some sickles that have not yet been found at the first site do not have scratched blades.
B
The scratches on the blades of the sickles found at the first site resulted from something other than harvesting grain.
C
Sickles at both sites had ritual uses whether or not those sickles were used to harvest grain.
D
At the second site tools other than sickles were used to harvest grain.
E
The sickles found at the first site were made by the same people who made the sickles found at the second site.
If so, firing 10 workers would decrease the manufacturing plant’s workforce. In addition to lacking the absentee workers, the plant would now lack the fired workers. And thus production might decrease.
A
ignores the possibility that if 10 workers were fired, each of the remaining workers would produce more televisions than previously
B
fails to show that the absentee rate would drop if 10 workers were fired
C
takes for granted that the normal rate of production can be attained only when no more than the average number of workers are absent
D
overlooks the possibility that certain workers are crucial to the production of televisions
E
takes for granted that the rate of production is not affected by the number of workers employed at the plant
Historian: One traditional childrearing practice in the nineteenth century was to make a child who misbehaved sit alone outside. Anyone passing by would conclude that the child had misbehaved. Nowadays, many child psychologists would disapprove of this practice because they believe that such practices damage the child’s self-esteem and that damage to children’s self-esteem makes them less confident as adults. However, no one disagrees that adults raised under that traditional practice were, on average, as confident as adults not so raised.
Summary
It was once traditional to make misbehaved children sit alone outside, and passersby would know they had misbehaved.
Many child psychologists don’t endorse this practice based on two beliefs: (1) that it damages children’s self-esteem; and (2) that damage to children’s self-esteem makes them less confident as adults.
Children raised with the traditional practice do not tend to have lower confidence levels than adults who never underwent this practice.
Very Strongly Supported Conclusions
Either the traditional practice didn’t tend to damage children’s self-esteem, or childhood self-esteem damage doesn’t harm adult confidence.
If the traditional practice damaged children’s self-esteem, childhood self-esteem damage doesn’t tend to harm adult confidence.
If childhood self-esteem damage harms adult confidence, the traditional practice didn’t tend to damage children’s self-esteem.
A
The beliefs of many present-day child psychologists about the consequences of loss of self-esteem are incorrect.
Unsupported. It’s possible that the child psychologists are wrong to believe that self-esteem loss leads to lowered confidence, but it’s also possible that the childrearing practice in question actually didn’t tend to cause self-esteem loss.
B
Some of the most confident adults, as well as some of the least confident adults, were raised under the traditional practice in question.
Unsupported. The stimulus only mentions average confidence levels, which tells us nothing about the margins. Maybe the most and least confident adults weren’t raised under the practice and the mid-confidence adults were, averaging out to the same confidence level in both groups.
C
With the traditional childrearing practice, passersby did not always make correct inferences about children’s behavior by observing them outdoors.
Anti-supported. We know that the children were made to sit outside because they misbehaved, and we also know that anyone passing by would conclude that the children sitting outside had misbehaved. Therefore, everyone passing by would make the correct inference!
D
The most confident adults are those who developed the highest level of self-esteem in childhood.
Unsupported. We know many psychologists think that childhood self-esteem loss leads to lower adult confidence, but we don’t know if that’s true. We also don’t know whether high self-esteem correlates with high confidence levels, or even if child psychologists believe it might!
E
If children’s loss of self-esteem makes them less confident as adults, then the traditional childrearing practice in question did not tend to cause significant loss of self-esteem.
Strongly supported. Since adults raised with the practice tend to be as confident as other adults, one of the psychologists’ claims must be wrong: either self-esteem loss doesn’t make children less confident as adults, or the practice didn’t tend to cause self-esteem loss.
A
It fails to consider the possibility that there was more than one practical joker.
B
It fails to indicate the degree to which handwriting samples should look alike in order to be considered of the same source.
C
It provides no explanation for why Miller should be the prime suspect.
D
It provides no explanation for why only one piece of evidence was obtained.
E
It takes for granted that if the handwriting on the note had been Miller’s, then the identity of the joker would have been ascertained to be Miller.
Question Stem
This is a Flaw or Descriptive Weakening question. The key words in the question stem are "grounds for criticizing... reasoning."
Foundational Skills
Phenomenon-hypothesis
Contrapositive
False positive v. false negative
Stimulus
The question is hard because the correct answer (A) is stating something implied by what you might have anticipated while (B) brings up a novel though irrelevant consideration and (E) masquerades as an assumption that you might have spotted.
Someone played a practical joke on Franklin. He doesn't know who did it though he suspects Miller because Miller "has always been jealous of me." Okay, that's motive. But what evidence does he have? Just one piece: a handwritten note where the handwriting does not match Miller's.
So, what conclusion can we draw? Well, you and I are thinking, it's unclear. The fact (phenomenon) that the handwriting doesn't match Miller's could be explained by a number of hypotheses:
1. It was Miller and she disguised her handwriting.
2. It was Miller and an unwitting accomplice wrote the note.
3. It was Miller and she had a willing co-conspirator write the note.
4. It was not Miller.
Franklin jumps to hypothesis (4) as the explanation. He assumes that if the handwriting doesn't match Miller's, then Miller didn't do it. Hypotheses (1) - (3) reveal why that assumption is problematic. It could be the case that the handwriting doesn't match Miller's and (yet) it is still Miller who did it.
Now that we've identified the issue with this argument both using the framework of assumptions and alternative hypotheses, we now can think about how to "criticize Franklin's reasoning."
At a very abstract and general level, we could say something like "It (Franklin's reasoning) fails to consider alternative hypotheses." That would capture hypotheses (1) through (3). That could be a correct answer, if all the other answers are bad. But the correct answer could also be (and in fact turns out to be) more specific.
Answer Choice (A)
(A) says that Franklin's reasoning "fails to consider the possibility that there was more than one practical joker." On first blush, you might think that this is merely descriptively accurate yet doesn't get to the weakness in the reasoning. True, you think, Franklin did not consider that this could have been a conspiracy (a plot involving more than one person). But how many people involved is not the issue. The issue is the identity of those involved.
Ah, but the number of people involved is related to the identity of those involved. Why did Franklin write off Miller? Precisely because he didn't consider that Miller could have had an accomplice, that there could have been more than one practical joker.
Do you see how the test writers made (A) subtle? They could have said "It fails to consider the possibility that Miller had an accomplice." That would have been the blunt and obvious way to state the weakness in Franklin's reasoning. But they didn't. Instead they stated something implied by the blunt version of the hypothesis. If it's true that Miller had an accomplice, then it must be true that there was more than one practical joker.
Answer Choice (B)
(B) says that Franklin's reasoning "fails to indicate the degree to which handwriting samples should look alike in order to be considered of the same source." This is true. It's descriptively accurate. Franklin merely asserts "the handwriting is not hers" without providing any reason for us to believe that assertion, e.g. just how closely must the curve on an "r" match or what angles of "v" or "w" are considered close enough?
All true. But, notice that that assertion "the handwriting is not hers" is being used as a premise. And as a rule of thumb, premises get the benefit of the presumption of truth. If Franklin asserts it, then, unless we have reasons to doubt him, we accept it as true. (B) is asking us to question this premise.
If we were detectives and if this were an actual investigation or criminal trial, then, yeah, this assertion absolutely would come under attack: we'd get experts to explain their methodology and testify so we can ascertain whether to believe Franklin's assertion that "the handwriting is not hers." But, we're doing an LR question. We're just being asked to "criticize Franklin's reasoning" and the rule of thumb is that you do not attack premises. Plus, as we already saw in the stimulus analysis, even granting Franklin the truth of this premise still leaves his argument vulnerable because the issue isn't in this premise. The issue is in the support relationship between this premise and the conclusion.
Answer Choice (C)
(C) says that no explanation was provided for why Miller should be the prime suspect. This is false. It's descriptively inaccurate. Franklin does give an explanation. He says that Miller "has always been jealous" of him. Now, you might think that's a weak motive, but that doesn't change the fact that Franklin gave an explanation. You're just judging that explanation as insufficient. No explanation is different from an explanation that you don't believe.
Answer Choice (D)
(D) says that no explanation was provided for why only one piece of evidence was obtained. This is true, it's descriptively accurate. Franklin did not explain why there isn't more evidence. But so what. From the sole existing piece of evidence Franklin drew a conclusion. That reasoning is present and weak. Our job is to attack that reasoning. That's it. It's not to ask questions that would have been relevant had we been actually investigating this case. Had we been actual detectives actually trying to solve the case, then yeah, we wonder why there was just one piece of evidence.
If you chose (D), you might have been thinking that Franklin's argument is weak because there was only one piece of evidence provided. That is true. But that's not what (D) says. In order to capture your justified concern, (D) should have said something like "It draws a conclusion unsupported by the only piece of evidence available."
Answer Choice (E)
(E) says that Franklin's reasoning "takes for granted" which is just "assumes" that - and here comes the conditional - "if the handwriting on the note had been Miller's, then the identity of the joker would have been ascertained to be Miller:"
match → Miller
(E) is testing your conditional logic with a classic sufficiency-necessity confusion. It also helps if you're familiar with the distinction between false positives and false negatives.
We figured out that Franklin does "take for granted" that if the handwriting didn't match Miller's, then Miller didn't do it:
/match → /Miller
What's the contrapositive of that? If Miller did it, then the handwriting would have matched:
Miller → match
(E)'s match → Miller is just not the same as Miller → match. You don't want to confuse sufficiency for necessity because, well, they're different. In the context of using a test result to determine identity, here's why they are different.
Let's stipulate that the handwriting analysis test that Franklin used was one that contains high false positives but low false negatives.
A false positive is when the test says "match!" but it should not have. The positive result ("match!") was false. Like if a doctor pronounced a man "pregnant!" That's a false positive. Or if a DNA analysis said "match!" but it shouldn't have because there was an error. We'd be rightly suspicious of positive results from tests that contain high rates of false positive. "Sure, test, you say it matches, but you always say that. I don't believe you."
But don't confuse that for when the test gives you negative results. The test could be highly reliable for negative results even if it's unreliable for positive results.
What's a false negative? It's when a test says "no match!" but it should have matched. The negative result was false. Like if a doctor pronounced an obviously 8 month pregnant woman "Not pregnant! Just lay off the chips." That's a false negative. Or if a DNA analysis said "no match!" but it should have said "match!" instead.
Since we stipulated that our handwriting analysis test contains few false negatives, we don't have these concerns. That means whenever the test says "no match," we should believe it. Truly there is no match.
That means it's reasonable to hold the position that /match → /Miller while rejecting the position that match → Miller. The two positions are not the same. The first position requires a test with low false negatives. The second position requires a test with low false positives.
A
Freudianism does not run counter to the rationalistic mainstream of Western philosophical and psychological thought
B
Freudianism holds that people can always achieve happiness through psychoanalysis
C
Freudianism may be the beginning of a new trend in Western philosophical and psychological thought
D
psychoanalysis provides one with a rational life plan
E
Freudianism reflects the predominantly rationalistic spirit of Western philosophical and psychological thought more than any other psychological theory
A
There is no evidence that there are wavelengths of sunlight that lead to both sunburn and melanoma.
B
There are people who have allergic reactions to certain chemicals found in many sunblocks.
C
Many sunblocks need repeated applications to remain effective for a significant length of time.
D
Toxins contained in certain chemical compounds also cause melanoma.
E
Sunburns appear immediately after exposure to the sun but melanoma appears years after repeated exposures.