This is a Parallel Flawed Method of Reasoning question.
The argument makes the oldest mistake in the book: sufficiency-necessity confusion.
The argument lays out a rule: if no high school diploma and no demonstrated competence, then no license.
/hs and /dc → /license
The argument then applies this rule to Marie but makes a logical mistake in doing so.
Marie has both a high school diploma and a demonstrated competence. That means she has failed the sufficient condition of the rule. That means the rule goes away. We cannot draw a conclusion about whether Marie will be licensed.
Yet that’s just what the argument does. It concludes that Marie will be licensed.
/hs and /dc → /license
hsmarie and dcmarie
________
licensemarie
That’s the sufficiency-necessity confusion.
Answer Choice (A) says without having either an excellent ear or exceptional manual dexterity, a person cannot play the piano well. "Without" is group 3, negate sufficient.
If no excellent ear and no manual dexterity, then no play piano well.
If (A) wants to be the correct answer, it just has to apply this general rule to Paul in the same sufficiency-necessity confused way that the rule was applied to Marie. (A) needs to show that Paul has an excellent ear and he has manual dexterity. Then (A) needs to conclude that Paul plays the piano well.
But (A) doesn’t do that and so (A) is wrong.
Instead, (A) has Paul fail the necessary condition by showing that he plays the piano well. That means Paul must have either an excellent ear or exceptional manual dexterity. That would be a valid conclusion. Yet (A) invalidly concludes that he must have both an excellent ear and exceptional manual dexterity.
Correct Answer Choice (B) says it's not possible to be an effective foreign language teacher without being fluent in at least two languages. "Without" is group 3, negate sufficient.
If not fluent in at least two languages, then not effective.
Already we encounter a trick. (B) tries to hide itself. We’re expecting a conjunctive sufficient condition, yet (B) gives us just a single sufficient condition. (B) is hoping that we would just move on.
But (B) is the correct answer, and it's correct because it commits the same sufficiency-necessity flaw.
Take this general rule and apply it to Professor Y. It says that Professor Y is fluent in Greek, English, and Persian. So Professor Y is fluent in at least two languages. She fails the sufficient condition just like Marie failed her sufficient condition. (B) just needs to invalidly conclude that Professor Y will be effective in order to be the correct answer choice. That’s exactly what (B) does.
/at-least-2 → /effective
at-least-2prof-y
________
effectiveprof-y
Answer Choice (C) says a person cannot be a licensed plumbing contractor without having completed an apprenticeship. "Without" is group 3, negate sufficient.
If licensed plumbing contractor, then completed apprenticeship.
Take this rule and apply it to Martin. Martin is a licensed plumber. I'm assuming that to mean the same thing as licensed plumbing contractor. Therefore, Martin completed his apprenticeship. This is valid.
Answer Choice (D) says no one can be an effective mayor of a major industrial seaport without a thorough knowledge of both national and international affairs. “Without" is group 3, negate sufficient.
If effective mayor of a major industrial seaport, then have thorough knowledge of national and international affairs.
Take this rule and apply it to Mayor L. Mayor L is an effective mayor. Does that trigger the sufficient condition? No, because we don’t know if Mayor L is an effective mayor of a major industrial seaport.
Okay, so (D) assumes that being an effective mayor is the same thing as being an effective mayor of a major industrial seaport. That’s not a reasonable assumption but it’s also not a sufficiency-necessity error. If we patch up that assumption, then (D) is valid. (D)’s conclusion would follow.
Answer Choice (E) says the only way to make a delicious vegetable soup is to use fresh vegetables. "The only" is group 1.
If delicious vegetable soup, then used fresh vegetables.
This particular vegetable soup is delicious, which means it satisfies the sufficient condition. That means (E) can validly draw the necessary condition as the conclusion. That’s exactly what (E) does.
This is a Flaw/Descriptive Weakening question.
The argument opens with OPA. Mr. Klemke argues that the complaints made against his company are unfounded. That’s his conclusion (OPC). His premises (OPP) are that the complainants are biased because they disagree with his political views.
Let’s pause there and analyze OPA. Is the reasoning strong? No. It’s a classic source attack. And that’s exactly what the author recognizes and calls out in her next sentence. She says that the complainants can be mistreated by Mr. Klemke’s company regardless of their political views. That’s true. That’s why Mr. Klemke’s argument is flawed.
The author, however, proceeds to draw her own flawed conclusion. She should have simply concluded that “Mr. Klemke has failed to prove that the complaints are unfounded.” That means we don’t know if the complaints are founded or unfounded. We only know that Mr. Klemke failed to make a case for their being unfounded.
What did she actually conclude? That “the complaints are not unfounded.” That means the complaints are substantiated. But they haven’t been substantiated. There’s no evidence at all that pertains to whether these complaints are true or false.
This is a classic flaw that conflates weakening an argument with proving the conclusion of said argument to be false. Weakening an argument erodes the support between the premise and the conclusion. It is engaged at an abstract level with the argument. If you want to show that the statement in the conclusion is false, then you have to descend to the ground level of what the argument is talking about: whose house and what roof and what date was the service provided and what went wrong, etc. You’d have to bring facts (premises) to bear on those issues if you want to prove the complaints are founded or unfounded. That’s very different from the premises the author actually offers which lives one level above these issues.
This is what Correct Answer Choice (B) points out. It says that the argument concludes that a claim (the complaints are unfounded) is false (they’re not unfounded) on the grounds that an inadequate argument has been given for it (Mr. Klemke’s source attack argument is inadequate).
Answer Choice (A) says that the argument takes a consequence of someone’s being biased to be a cause of the bias. (A) charged the argument with confusing cause and effect. But the argument doesn’t do that. What is “a consequence of someone’s being biased”? According to Mr. Klemke, it causes the person to lodge false accusations at his company. According to the author, nothing. What is “a cause of the bias”? According to Mr. Klemke, having political views different from his own. According to the author, nothing. So according to (A), the argument, that is, the author’s argument confused nothing with nothing. Even if we take (A) to be describing Mr. Klemke’s argument, which we shouldn’t because that’s not the argument in question, but just as an exercise, even if we do, (A) is still descriptively inaccurate. Mr. Klemke didn’t confuse a person lodging false accusations at his company with a person having political views.
Answer Choice (C) says that the argument rejects an argument on the grounds that the person who offered the argument (Mr. Klemke) is baised. (C) fails to accurately describe both the premise and the conclusion. The author never claimed that Mr. Klemke is biased. Mr. Klemke accused someone else of being biased. So the premise descriptor is false. The conclusion should have rejected an argument because that would have been the right move. But, as we discussed, it actually rejected Mr. Klemke’s conclusion. So the conclusion descriptor is false as well.
Answer Choice (D) says that the argument relies on a sample of opinions (false, the author’s premise does not rely on a sample of opinions) that is unlikely to represent diverse political outlooks.
Answer Choice (E) says that the argument overlooks the possibility that people whose views diverge are unaware of their disagreement. It’s unclear whether the argument overlooks this but it doesn’t matter because this has nothing to do with why the argument is flawed. Mr. Klemke is a person whose (political) views are different from his dissatisfied customers. Mr. Klemke is clearly aware of this divergence in views. It’s unclear whether his customers are aware.
This is a Flaw/Descriptive Weakening question.
The stimulus starts with a claim from many prominent physicists. So that’s OPP. They claim that energy is merely a theoretical construct. Next, the author gives a premise, that the theory of relativity tells us that there is no essential distinction between energy and mass, and draws an intermediate conclusion, that mass must also be a theoretical construct.
First, note that the author uses OPP to further her own argument. This is uncommon. Usually, when OPP is present, the author challenges it.
Next, let’s examine the reasoning in this sub-argument before moving on to the main argument. How strong is the support? Well, the two premises both rely on authority to establish the truth of their claims. The first premise relies upon the authority of “many prominent physicists.” The second premise relies upon the authority of the theory of relativity. When it comes to appeals to authority, the key question to ask is if the appeal is to relevant authority. If it isn’t, then that’s a flaw. Here, the appeals are to relevant authority. First to “many prominent physicists” on what energy is and second to the “theory of relativity” on the relationship between mass and energy. Does that mean the sub-conclusion is validly drawn? No. Arguments that rely on appeals to relevant authority are never valid. But they can be reasonable. This sub-conclusion, mass is a theoretical construct, is reasonable. We can weaken the argument and we can strengthen the argument.
The main argument proceeds to use this sub-conclusion as a major premise. It also supplies another major premise, that all physical objects are composed purely of mass and energy. From those two premises, the conclusion is drawn that physical objects must also be theoretical constructs.
Now let’s examine the reasoning in this main argument. Do you recognize the pattern? It’s a part-to-whole argument. One premise states that mass (and energy) has a certain characteristic (being a theoretical construct). Another premise states that physical objects (whole) are composed purely of mass and energy (parts). The conclusion attributes the characteristic of the parts to the whole.
This is what Correct Answer Choice (B) points out. It says that the argument overlooks the possibility that something (a physical object, the “whole”) may lack a feature (being a theoretical construct) even if it (a physical object) is composed purely of things (mass and energy, the “parts”) that have that feature (being a theoretical construct). That’s exactly right.
Answer Choice (A) says the argument fails to consider whether anything other than physical objects may be composed purely of mass and energy. That’s true, the argument didn’t consider this. Do mass and energy together make up other, non-physical object things? But, wait, it doesn’t matter. Whether the answer is yes or no has no bearing on why the argument is vulnerable to criticism.
Answer Choice (C) says the argument presumes without justification that two things may have different features even if there’s no essential distinction between them. But that’s descriptively inaccurate. The argument actually presumes the opposite. It presumes that two things (mass and energy) cannot have different features if there’s no essential distinction between them. That’s how it drew the intermediate conclusion that mass is also a theoretical construct.
Answer Choice (D) says that the argument fails to adequately address the possibility that features of some theoretical construct need not be shared by every theoretical construct. The argument didn’t address this but it didn’t need to. (D) thinks “theoretical construct” has a “feature,” but in the argument, “theoretical construct” is itself the “feature.” In the argument, “theoretical construct” is the feature of energy and it’s also the feature of mass. We can map (D)’s “theoretical features” onto “mass” and “energy” in the argument, but then we’d have nothing to map (D)’s “features” onto.
Answer Choice (E) says the argument presumes, without providing justification, that the fact that a suggestion has been made by a physicist proves the truth of that suggestion. This is the most attractive wrong answer. (E) targets the reasoning in the sub-argument. Specifically, (E) recognizes that the reasoning there relied on an appeal to authority. This is good. But where (E) missteps is in failing to recognize that the appeal is to (many) relevant authorities. (E) thinks the argument “presumes, without providing justification” that just because “a physicist” made a suggestion, the suggestion is true. But in reality, the argument “presumes, with justification” that because “many prominent physicists” made a suggestion, the suggestion is true. The former would be a glaring vulnerability. The latter, while not ironclad, is much less of a vulnerability. The former is not equivalent to the latter, and therefore (E) is descriptively inaccurate.
This is a Method of Reasoning question.
We’re asked to describe Espinosa’s argument, how he responds to Jones. Jones speaks first. She argues that a budget deficit is good for the country’s finances because it discourages excessive government spending.
Espinosa responds. He says, “That’s like saying…” Okay, pause. At this point, we already know that he’s arguing by analogy. And that’s already enough to hunt out Correct Answer Choice (A). It’s the only one that describes Espinosa’s argument as an argument by analogy.
Okay, so what is it like? It’s like arguing that reaching the credit limit is good for your finances because it discourages excessive spending. He concedes that reaching the credit limit will likely discourage excessive spending. But reaching the credit limit is still a poor financial decision. That never should have happened in the first place. The same goes for the government, meaning the government never should have had a budget deficit to begin with.
(A) accurately describes Espinosa’s argument. His argument about reaching the credit limit is clearly fallacious. He uses that to show that Jones’s argument is analogously fallacious.
Answer Choice (B) says Espinosa demonstrates that Jones’s argument is circular. That it begs the question. That it presupposes what it sets out to prove. That’s not right. Jones’s argument isn’t circular. The premise and the conclusion are different claims. Espinosa doesn’t mistake Jones’s argument for a circular one. Here’s a circular argument that Jones could have made: A budget deficit is good for the country’s finances because spending in excess of revenues improves a nation’s financial situation.
Answer Choice (C) says Espinosa offers empirical evidence that undermines Jones’s conclusion. No, he doesn’t. Here’s what empirical evidence might look like: Back in 2010, France experienced a budget deficit which caused it to default on its treasury bond interest payments. That shattered international confidence in the French government, which resulted in a decade of economic decline. That’s empirical evidence that a budget deficit isn’t good for a country's finances.
Answer Choice (D) says Espinosa launched a source attack against Jones. Come on. Espinosa knows better than that. Whether Jones’s personal finances are managed well is irrelevant to Jones’s argument. Espinosa doesn’t go there.
Answer Choice (E) says Espinosa suggests that Jones overgeneralized. That’s not right. Jones’s argument didn’t overgeneralize. And Espinosa certainly didn’t claim that it did. Here’s what Jones might have argued that would have been an overgeneralization: Back in 2010, France experienced a budget deficit which caused it to impose austerity measures. Those policies resulted in a decade of economic boom that the country has never seen before. Therefore, a budget deficit is good for a country’s finances. Jones is a bit too eager. Just because it worked out for France doesn’t mean it’s generally good. That’s overgeneralization.
This is an NA question.
The editorial begins with a premise that last year, many polls found that most people in the country say that they’re tired of celebrity gossip on TV news and that they’re not willing to watch them anymore. But last year’s ratings for TV news soared.
Okay, so something’s not quite adding up. But what is it? At this point in the stimulus, it resembles an RRE, doesn’t it? What’s going on? How can both of these claims be true?
Well, the editorial thinks (concludes) that often people portray themselves as they wish to be perceived, rather than as they actually are, whether or not they’re aware of it.
That could be the explanation. But in order for that to be the explanation, the argument must assume at least two things.
First, we know that somebody's watching those shows otherwise the ratings couldn’t have soared. And it’s a lot of somebodies. In order for the conclusion to follow, we have to assume that at least some of those same people who responded to the polls saying they’re sick of the shows and don’t want to watch them anymore ended up watching anyway. There must be at least some overlap between the set of people who say they don’t want to watch and the set of people who watched. If there’s no overlap, then that means everyone who ended up watching either didn’t respond to the polls or responded to the polls saying they wanted to watch. If that’s the case, then the conclusion cannot be supported on these premises. The argument falls apart.
But even with this first assumption, the conclusion still doesn’t yet follow. What does follow is that often people say one thing and do another. In other words, people are often hypocritical. But that’s not what the actual conclusion says. The actual conclusion says that people often “portray themselves as they wish to be perceived.” Where did that come from? Is being sick of those shows how they “wish to be perceived” or were they simply answering the poll questions without regard to how they “wish to be perceived”? If I tell you I don’t like ice cream, you can’t automatically assume that I wish to be perceived as someone who doesn’t like ice cream. Perhaps I’m just telling you that I don’t like ice cream and the thought never occurred to me that it would make me look bad. Seriously, what kind of degenerate doesn’t like ice cream? That’s the second assumption. At least some people who told the polls that they’re sick of the shows and don’t want to watch them anymore wish to be perceived as being sick of the shows and not wanting to watch anymore.
These two assumptions show up in Answer Choice (B) and Correct Answer Choice (E).
(B) goes after the first assumption and says that last year, “almost everyone” who said they’re sick of the shows and unwilling to watch anymore continued to watch. This is really helpful for the argument. But it’s not necessary. We don’t need “almost everyone.” We just need “some” people. Think about what “almost everyone” means. Yeah, it’s ambiguous but that doesn’t mean it has no obviously right and wrong interpretations. 95% would obviously be “almost everyone” and 60% would obviously not be “almost everyone.” But if it is in fact the case that 60% of those who said they’re sick of the shows yet watched anyway, then it's still really good for the argument. It’s not as good as 95% but it’s still good. That demonstrates (B) as unnecessary.
(E) goes after the second assumption and says that last year, “at least some” people who responded to the polls wished to be perceived as unwilling to watch the shows. That’s exactly right. If this were false, then that means nobody who responded to the polls wished to be perceived as unwilling to watch the shows. That would render the conclusion unsupportable on the basis of the premises.
Answer Choice (A) can be eliminated because of “everyone.” That’s even more unnecessary than “almost everyone” in (B). There’s another problem. (A) is trying to say that there must be an overlap between people who said they’re sick of the shows and people who said they’re unwilling to watch the shows. That’s not necessary. What we actually need is an overlap between either of those two sets with the set of people who in fact watched the shows.
Answer Choice (C) says “at least some,” which is good. The rest of it is not. (C) says at least some people who responded to the polls don’t believe that in their responses they’re portraying themselves as they actually were. In other words, some people were intentionally misrepresenting themselves through their response. Do we need that to be true? No. It’s fine if no one intentionally misrepresented themselves. They still could have unintentionally misrepresented themselves. The conclusion accommodated this already when it said “whether or not they’re aware of it.”
Answer Choice (D) says “no one” who responded to the polls portrayed themselves as they actually were. So everyone misrepresented themselves, whether they meant to or not. We don’t need this either. The argument doesn’t care if half of the people misrepresented themselves.
This is an SA question.
The stimulus begins a premise that defines “practical intelligence” as “the ability to discover means to ends.” Next, another premise places “practical intelligence” as a member in the set of “skills” and “skills” do not develop on their own.
Now we get a conditional conclusion. If there’s a being that was never deprived of anything and was always and immediately given what it wanted, then that being could never possess “practical intelligence.”
Clearly, there’s a missing link. What is it?
This argument doesn’t translate neatly into conditional logic. But at a high level, you know the conclusion is arguing for this being not having practical intelligence. On the basis of what? On the basis of what this being is and on the basis of what practical intelligence is. The premises tell us that practical intelligence is a skill, and more specifically, it’s a skill to discover means to ends. So that’s an opening. And all we know about the being is that it’s never deprived of anything and gets whatever it wants immediately. These two ideas already connect together. Together, it means that this being is never in need of practical intelligence. Why not? Because think about what practical intelligence is. It’s the ability to discover means to ends. But this being always and immediately gets whatever it wants. Therefore, it’s never in need of discovering means to ends. Does that mean it will never possess the ability to discover means to ends? In other words, is it true that if it doesn’t need practical intelligence, then it won’t have practical intelligence?
Correct Answer Choice (B) says it’s true. It says that skills are acquired only if they are needed. Contrapositive: if skills are not needed, then they are not acquired. Kick the idea of “skills” up into the domain. We know practical intelligence is a skill and so this rule applies to practical intelligence. If it’s not needed, then it won’t be acquired. The premises trigger the sufficient condition. Therefore, we can draw the necessary condition as the conclusion.
Answer Choice (A) is a conditional constructed using “without.” Translated, (A) says that acquiring a skill requires the help of others. But the problem here is that the premises don’t trigger the failure of the necessary condition. The premises don’t amount to other beings not helping this being. In fact, if we take seriously the claim that this being gets whatever it wants, then as soon as it wants others to help it, others will help it.
Answer Choice (C) talks about the best way to acquire practical intelligence. But that implies there are other ways. So at best, this precludes the being in the argument from the best way of acquiring practical intelligence. That doesn’t preclude all ways.
Answer Choice (D) talks about a being that is already practically intelligent and how it gets what it wants. We don’t care. We’re trying to make an argument that this being cannot be a being that is practically intelligent. Telling us about beings that are already practically intelligent doesn’t help.
Answer Choice (E) talks about a being that is always deprived of what it wants. At this point, we can eliminate this answer. The premises fail this sufficient condition. Our being is never deprived of what it wants. Failing the sufficient condition renders this rule irrelevant.
The question stem says the reasoning in which one of the following is most strongly supported by the guidelines. This is a rarer type of question though we have seen it plenty before. It’s like MSS in that the support flows down from the stimulus into the answers. They're asking us to take the guidelines in the stimulus and push them into the arguments in the answers to improve their reasoning. But that’s like a PSA question. Instead of the stimulus containing an argument searching for a conditional in the answer, it's the other way around. The stimulus contains a conditional searching for an argument. This is a cosmetic difference.
The stimulus gives us a ton of rules in conditional form. The first one is that if a radiant floor cooling system is to be installed or if it is to be a luxury hotel, then a radiant floor heating system must be installed. The sufficient condition here is a disjunctive, it's "or." That means we can split the arrow, so to speak. A radiant floor cooling system and a luxury hotel are each independently sufficient to demand the installation of radiant floor heating.
rf-cool → rf-heat
luxury → rf-heat
The next sentence is the only other conditional. It hooks up to radiant floor cooling. It says a radiant floor cooling system should not be installed in any hotel that is located in a region that tends to have high humidity during the summer. That means a necessary condition of installing radiant floor cooling is not high summer humidity. Or, contrapositively, if we’re in a hotel located in a region that tends to have high summer humidity, then no radiant floor cooling.
rf-cool → /region-high-sum-hum
Before looking at the answers, take stock of what conclusions are reachable. In general, we can run conditionals forward or contrapose backwards. Running them forward reaches the necessary conditions. Contraposing them backwards reaches the failure of the sufficient conditions. For these conditionals, that means there are four reachable conclusions:
rf-heat (either satisfying rf-cool or luxury)
/region-high-sum-hum (satisfying rf-cool)
/rf-cool (either failing rf-heat or failing /region-high-sum-hum)
/luxury (failing rf-heat)
It’s also important to take note of what conclusions are unreachable. That will help us quickly eliminate answers that are wrong on the basis of their logic alone. In general, affirmation of the necessary condition and the failure of the sufficient conditions are unreachable. Here, that means conclusions of rf-cool or /rf-heat are unreachable.
The first pair of answers I want to consider is Answer Choice (D) and Answer Choice (E). They both contain unreachable conclusions and hence are both wrong on the basis of their logic alone. Look at the conclusions in each. (D) concludes that the newest Bonjour hotel should have neither radiant floor heating nor radiant floor cooling. The “/rf-heat” portion of the conclusion is unreachable. (E) concludes just the opposite, that it should have both. The “rf-cool” portion of the conclusion is unreachable.
The conditionals in the stimulus cannot possibly be used to arrive at those conclusions. We were not told the necessary conditions of having radiant floor heating. And because we weren't told those necessary conditions, we don't know what to fail in order to draw the conclusion that there should be no radiant floor heating. This is the same logic with regard to radiant floor cooling. We need to know what its sufficient conditions are. But the stimulus doesn't tell us what the sufficient conditions of having radiant floor cooling are. Therefore we don't know what we need to satisfy to trigger radiant floor cooling.
Now contrast with Correct Answer Choice (B). It concludes that the newest Bonjour hotel should have radiant floor heating but not radiant floor cooling, rf-heat and /rf-cool. Those are reachable conclusions. (B) says that the region has high humidity year-round. That means it has high humidity during the summer. That fails a necessary condition of rf-cool. (B) also says that the hotel will be luxury. That satisfies one of the sufficient conditions for rf-heat.
Answer Choice (A) and Answer Choice (C) don’t suffer from logic issues like (D) and (E). They both contain reachable conclusions: /rf-cool. We can reach that conclusion in two ways, either failing rf-heat or failing /region-high-sum-hum, meaning either saying that the hotel won’t have radiant floor heating or saying that the hotel will be in a region with high summer humidity. But (A) and (C) don’t do either.
(A) says it’s not newly constructed. That immediately kicks it out of the domain of the stimulus which is guidelines for newly constructed hotels.
(A) and (C) both say that they are not luxury, but that doesn’t trigger anything.
(C) also says the newest Bonjour hotel will have radiant floor heating. That also triggers nothing.
This is a PSA question.
The difficulty in this question is partially in the complexity of the argument. Where is the main conclusion? There’s also a sub-conclusion present! It’s also partially in the answers. Some of the principles on offer tempt us to react based on what we know to be true or false in the world. But if we cut through these difficulties, this is a straightforward PSA question with a straightforward PSA answer: P→C.
First, the ranger says it’s unfair to cite people for fishing in the newly restricted areas. Okay, why? Because the people are probably unaware of the changes in the rules. Okay, why do you say that? Because many of “us rangers” are even unaware of the changes in the rules. So here’s the complex argument.
Minor premise: Many rangers are unaware of the new rules.
Major premise/sub-conclusion: Park visitors are probably unaware of the new rules.
Main conclusion: Unfair to cite visitors for violations.
But there’s one more pesky sentence at the end that says until after we really try to publicize these new rules, the most we should do is to issue a simple warning. How does this fit in? Maybe this is the main-main conclusion? Perhaps. It’s unfair to give citations, therefore issue a warning instead. That makes sense. Maybe this is the second half of the main conclusion? Park visitors aren’t aware of the new rules, therefore don’t cite them (negative), just give a warning (positive). That makes sense too. The conclusion is an injunction with a positive and negative component. Either way you interpret the last statement will be just fine. Something ambiguous like this won’t form the basis of the right/wrong answers. So, for simplicity, I’ll just interpret this to be part of the main conclusion.
Minor premise: Many rangers are unaware of the new rules.
Major premise/sub-conclusion: Park visitors are probably unaware of the new rules.
Main conclusion: Unfair to cite visitors; instead, give warnings.
Before we look at the answers, note that there are two places for us to PSA the support. We can bridge the minor premise to the sub-conclusion or we can bridge the major premise to the main conclusion. What would those bridges, in our own words, look like?
Minor descriptive-P → descriptive-C bridge: If some rangers are unaware of the new rules, then probably visitors are unaware.
Major descriptive-P → prescriptive-C bridge: If visitors are unaware of the new rules, then they should only be given a warning.
Correct Answer Choice (A) supplies the major descriptive-P → prescriptive-C bridge. It says that people should not be cited for violating laws of which they are unaware. If unaware, then should not be cited. Granted, it doesn’t “justify” the “simple warning” bit of the conclusion but this is a PSA question, after all, and not an SA question. The bar isn’t set so high as to require validity.
If you eliminated (A), ask yourself why. I don’t know, but might it be because (A) runs against what you know to be true in the world? Our legal system has a principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Yet (A) contradicts this principle. Is that why you were repelled by (A)?
Answer Choice (C) pretends to supply the minor P→C bridge. It says that the public should not be expected to know more about the law than any law enforcement officer. That lowers the bar for what the public “should be expected to know” all the way down to the knowledge possessed by the least-informed officer. So if any officer is unaware of the new regulations, then the public should not be expected to be aware either. On the face of it, this is appealing. The minor premise says some rangers aren’t aware, and with this principle, we can conclude that the public should not be expected to be aware. But wait a second, the sub-conclusion isn't prescriptive. It isn’t about what the public should or should not be expected to know. It’s a factual, probabilistic, descriptive statement about what the public does or does not know. To justify the minor support structure, we needed a descriptive-P → descriptive-C bridge.
But it’s appealing because we “like” this principle. We think it’s right. We think it’s just. But ask yourself, even if this principle is true, where does it get us? It gets us to the position that the public shouldn’t be expected to know about the new regulations. Okay. Then what? Does that mean they also therefore should be cited? That depends on whether ignorance of the law is an excuse. So you’re back to (A) anyway.
Answer Choice (B) says regulations should be widely publicized. Okay, so publicize them. But what should we do in the meantime? Should we cite or merely warn violators? (B) is embarrassingly silent.
Answer Choice (D) puts the burden on the public. It says that people who fish in a public park should make every effort to be fully aware of the rules. Where does this principle get us? That if there’s some lapse in knowledge about the rules, then it’s squarely on the shoulders of the public? That doesn’t help justify the conclusion.
Answer Choice (E) is a principle that affords violators the right to explain themselves, a right to a defense. Okay, calm down. Nobody is talking about a trial here. We’re just trying to figure out if a warning is enough or if a citation is warranted. It doesn’t matter what the violator has to say about how they view the regulations and whether they think it applies to them.
This is a Flaw/Descriptive Weakening question.
The stimulus begins with a premise about a “new experimental curriculum” that a plumbing school has been using “for several years.” Then it says that a survey last year found that only 33% of the school’s graduates passed the certification exam, and that 33% is not good because the national average is “well above” that. Those are the premises. From those premises, the conclusion claims that the new curriculum has “lowered the quality of plumbing instruction.”
What?
Where did we encounter a decrease in the quality of plumbing instruction? We only have one static data point. We need at least two data points to show change. What was the pass rate last year and the year before? Was it higher? If it was higher than 33%, then maybe instruction has declined. But if it was lower, then maybe instruction has improved. That’s a major issue in this argument.
The only evidence we have from the argument, the results of the exam, shows that there’s something subpar about the plumbing school. It likely has something to do with the quality of the instruction. But there could also be other causal forces at work. Maybe its students. Maybe the school was severely damaged last year in a catastrophic fire.
Okay, so if you spot the weakness, you’re almost there. You still have to jump over the hurdle of the abstractly worded answers.
And it starts with the worst offender, Answer Choice (A). Just look at it. It says the argument is flawed because it treats a phenomenon as an effect of an observed change in the face of evidence indicating that it may be the cause of that change. The quick way to eliminate (A) is to recognize that this is a cause-effect confusion flaw, a commonly recurring flaw in LR. But it’s not what’s happening here, as we discussed above. The mistakes here are (1) confusing static (no change) with dynamic (change) and (2) misattributed cause.
The slow and thorough method involves lassoing the abstract language in (A) to the tangible concrete language in the stimulus. How do we do that? We can begin by looking at “treats a phenomenon as an effect of an observed change.” What is the argument treating as an effect? The decreased quality of plumbing instruction. So that must be the phenomenon. And it’s treating that as the effect of “an observed change,” which must be the adoption of the new curriculum. But wait, is that really a “change?” The curriculum has been in place for several years already. This is already looking to be descriptively inaccurate.
Let’s keep going. How about “in the face of evidence indicating that decreased quality of plumbing instruction may be the cause of adoption of the new curriculum”? What evidence? This is also descriptively inaccurate. The only evidence we have from the stimulus is that something isn’t up to snuff about the school. There’s no evidence that the school saw a sharp drop in its quality of instruction and then decided that they needed to fix this by adopting a new curriculum.
Answer Choice (B) says that the argument uses a lack of evidence that the quality of the school’s plumbing instruction has increased as though it were conclusive evidence that it has decreased. No, it doesn’t. It’s true that there is a lack of evidence of increase. But that’s not what the argument uses. The argument uses the presence of static evidence, the 33% pass rates, as if it were evidence of change. Also descriptively inaccurate.
Correct Answer Choice (C) can, fortunately, be analyzed in terms of premise descriptor and conclusion descriptor. It says that the argument “concludes that something has diminished in quality…” and indeed this is descriptively accurate. The argument concludes that the plumbing instruction has decreased in quality. “From evidence indicating that [plumbing instruction] is of below-average quality.” This is an accurate description of the premises. The evidence is the 33% pass rates. Does that indicate that plumbing instruction is of below-average quality? Not definitively, as I already noted above, but evidence doesn’t have to be definitive. And this is evidence of poor instruction. (C) also captures the move from static (low-quality instruction) to dynamic (decreased quality) that’s at the heart of this bad argument.
Answer Choice (D) says that the argument uses a national average as a standard without specifying what that national average is. This is true! Descriptively accurate! But it doesn’t matter because the argument isn’t weak for failing to specify just how many percentage points below the national average is “well below.” Imagine if the argument had told us what the national average was. Say it was 50%. The school’s pass rate is 33%, which is “well below.” Okay, is the argument better now? No. Because that was never the issue. Imagine again that the national average was 75%. The school’s pass rate is 33%, again “well below.” Is the argument better now? Or is the argument even substantively different now? No and no, because it doesn’t matter precisely how much below is “well below.”
Answer Choice (E) says that the argument confuses a “required” factor with a “sufficient” factor. This is the classic sufficiency-necessity confusion. That’s the oldest mistake in the book. That’s not what’s happening here. We’d have to do major reconstructive surgery on the argument for (E) to be right. We’d have to argue that the quality of a school’s curriculum is essential in the improvement of their graduates' pass rates on the national exam. Therefore, a school can expect to see improvements in pass rates simply by adopting a quality curriculum. That would be mistaking a necessary factor with a sufficient factor.
This is an uncommon question stem, but it's not entirely novel. This question stem shares many similarities to MSS and PSA questions. The correct answer choice is accepted by Graham but not accepted by Zahler. Looking at the stimulus, you'll see that each of Graham and Zahler makes an argument. That means the correct answer will contain a claim that helps Graham's argument. That's the sense in which Graham will accept the claim. That's the sense in which this is an MSS or PSA for Graham. But, it's just the opposite for Zahler. Moving from Zahler's premise to his conclusion, we should expect him to reject the claim.
So what does Zahler say? He says that the Graham motor company should stop running its deceptive minivan commercials which claim that the Graham's minivan has foldable third-row seats while Zahler minivans don't. That's his conclusion. On the basis of what support? Well, he says Zahler's newest model minivan actually has this feature.
Let's take a look at how the Graham executive responds. She concludes that the commercial is not misleading. Why? Because Zahler is still selling older models which lack that feature.
So, on the one hand, Zahler says that because its newest models have this feature, the advertisement is misleading. Graham responds by saying that not all the models have this feature—the older ones still lack it—therefore the advertisement is not misleading. With this in mind, we can now comb through the answers to find one that Graham will accept because it supports her argument but Zahler will reject because it doesn't support his argument.
Correct Answer Choice (A) says it's not misleading for a company to advertise that its product has a feature that a competing product lacks if some instances of the competing product that are currently offered for sale lack the feature in question. This is a conditional claim using the “if... then...” formulation. It is also an abstract claim which requires us to pin the abstractions to the tangibles. It’s not misleading for a company (Graham) to advertise that its product (minivan) has a feature (foldable third-row seats) that a competing product lacks (Zahler) if some instances of the competing product that are currently offered for sale (Zahler’s older models) lack the feature in question (foldable third-row seats). This is exactly right. Graham would accept this claim because it helps her argument just like how a PSA answer would. Shoving (A) into Graham's argument makes it valid (or nearly so). Yet, this is precisely the reason why Zahler would reject the claim. The facts in question trigger the sufficient conditions which allow the inference of the necessary condition. Zahler wants to reject the necessary condition and therefore must reject the whole conditional.
Answer Choice (B) differs from (A) only in the sufficient condition. So that's what we will examine. The sufficient condition here is if company executives are unaware that the competing product has a feature in question. The facts in the stimulus failed to trigger this sufficient condition because the executives are aware. Because the sufficient condition does not trigger, the condition is powerless and hence irrelevant. Neither Graham nor Zahler has any reason to accept or reject this claim because it does nothing.
Answer Choice (C) is subject to the same analysis as in (B). It also differs only in its sufficient condition. Its sufficient condition is in a state of uncertainty because we don’t know anything about consumer choice. The entire conditional claim is also irrelevant.
Answer Choices (D) and (E) can be eliminated on the basis of their logic alone, like many PSA answers. Notice the necessary condition here differs from the other three answers. They say that it is misleading if such and such conditions are met. This is problematic. Zahler is the one that wants to claim the commercial is misleading. So at best, these answers allow the facts of the stimulus to trigger their sufficient condition and thereby allow Zahler to draw his conclusion. But, this is not what the question stem asked us to do. We were supposed to find an answer that Zahler would reject. If we want to fix these answers, we’d first have to start by changing “if” to “only if.” With this change in place, (D) would still be wrong since the facts in the stimulus don’t fail the necessary condition. (E), however, would be right. The facts in the stimulus fail the necessary condition, which allows Graham to draw the failure of the sufficient as her conclusion. And this is the same reason why Zahler would reject (E).