PT 65, LR1, Q16 Forum

[AOT]

Just cannot get my head around why B is correct and D is not. It seems to me that they're both assumptions. B is a more necessary assumption, but without B and D the argument doesn't work.

I picked B, but really struggled to choose between B and D. D seems to bridge a second gap in the argument, i.e. that if NOT ALL the voters abstain then the matter will NOT be decided by the city voters. Both B and D in this case are required assumptions, B just more so.

So if we had

Premise 1) everyone should A or N
Premise 2) if everyone A –> city votes

Conc: At least 1 A

We need to be able to show that: if at least 1 A –> NOT city votes, as well as the fact that we dont want “city votes”.

Hope that makes sense. I must be missing something – but no idea what!

[Colonel_funkadunk]

Just cannot get my head around why B is correct and D is not. It seems to me that they're both assumptions. B is a more necessary assumption, but without B and D the argument doesn't work.

I picked B, but really struggled to choose between B and D. D seems to bridge a second gap in the argument, i.e. that if NOT ALL the voters abstain then the matter will NOT be decided by the city voters. Both B and D in this case are required assumptions, B just more so.

So if we had

Premise 1) everyone should A or N
Premise 2) if everyone A –> city votes

Conc: At least 1 A

We need to be able to show that: if at least 1 A –> NOT city votes, as well as the fact that we dont want “city votes”.

Hope that makes sense. I must be missing something – but no idea what!

The argument concludes that at least 1 member of the city council should vote. Necessary for that conclusion is that it should not be decided on by the city's' voters. If you negate that answer choice "the proposal should be decided on by the city's voters" it destroys the argument. D is maybe something supported by the passage but it's not required for the argument to be valid.

[AOT]

The argument concludes that at least 1 member of the city council should vote. Necessary for that conclusion is that it should not be decided on by the city's' voters. If you negate that answer choice "the proposal should be decided on by the city's voters" it destroys the argument. D is maybe something supported by the passage but it's not required for the argument to be valid.

Ugh I just wrote you a long and detailed answer and it got deleted. This will be slightly less clear, but hopefully still make sense.

1. Thanks for the response. But I dont agree that D is supported by the passage. Passage says that if all abstain --> city will decide. The inverse of which is, if city does not decide --> not all abstain. It does not say, if not all abstain --> city does not decide. If you dont have that last assumption, then they could all vote against, and the city STILL gets to decide.

2. Only thing I can think of is that the argument isnt trying to get at making certain that the city does not decide. It is just trying to get rid of one scenario under which the city definitely would decide.

[Christine (MLSAT)]

2. Only thing I can think of is that the argument isnt trying to get at making certain that the city does not decide. It is just trying to get rid of one scenario under which the city definitely would decide.

That's exactly the situation.

The conclusion is not that "at least one member voting against is ALL we need to do", but rather that "at least one member voting against is a thing that needs to happen". In order to support the idea that it's ALL we need to do, we'd absolutely need some sort of guarantee that doing that thing would get the goal accomplished.

But our conclusion stops far short of that. It says only that we SHOULD have at least one member vote against. The only thing we actually need for this a good reason why we should avoid the unanimous-abstaining. We've already been given a conditional about what occurs if we have unanimous-abstaining, but we don't have any information about whether the result of that conditional is desired or not. (B) gives us the additional information that it's an UNDESIRED outcome.

If we want to avoid that outcome, it makes sense that we want to avoid the trigger that will lead to it!

For instance, let's say if you get Ebola, you'll die a horrible death. So, it makes sense that you would want to avoid getting Ebola. That doesn't guarantee that you WON'T die a horrible death - but you still want to avoid Ebola!!

As I said above, (D) would be needed for an argument that was trying to conclude that ALL we have to do is make sure at least one member votes against.

What do you think?

[AOT]

2. Only thing I can think of is that the argument isnt trying to get at making certain that the city does not decide. It is just trying to get rid of one scenario under which the city definitely would decide.

That's exactly the situation.

The conclusion is not that "at least one member voting against is ALL we need to do", but rather that "at least one member voting against is a thing that needs to happen". In order to support the idea that it's ALL we need to do, we'd absolutely need some sort of guarantee that doing that thing would get the goal accomplished.

But our conclusion stops far short of that. It says only that we SHOULD have at least one member vote against. The only thing we actually need for this a good reason why we should avoid the unanimous-abstaining. We've already been given a conditional about what occurs if we have unanimous-abstaining, but we don't have any information about whether the result of that conditional is desired or not. (B) gives us the additional information that it's an UNDESIRED outcome.

If we want to avoid that outcome, it makes sense that we want to avoid the trigger that will lead to it!

For instance, let's say if you get Ebola, you'll die a horrible death. So, it makes sense that you would want to avoid getting Ebola. That doesn't guarantee that you WON'T die a horrible death - but you still want to avoid Ebola!!

As I said above, (D) would be needed for an argument that was trying to conclude that ALL we have to do is make sure at least one member votes against.

What do you think?

Makes sense to me! Thank you!