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Hi All,

I need help with PT6-S2-Q14.

For those not familiar with the argument, here is the core:
C:
Smith's new novel is plausible

P:
"As anyone who has actually read the novel would agree, each one of the incidents in which Smith's Hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other."

It is clear that the author is committing the fallacy of composition, in this case, part-to-whole.

However, I still got tripped up between (B) and (D) because I thought (B) was a legitimate weakener for this question. The reason I got tripped up was because I was under the impression that it would weaken the conclusion by way of refuting the sole premise on which the argument relies. For weaken answer choices, aren't we sometimes allowed to attack the truthhood of the premises in order to weaken an argument? (B) is prefaced with "It ignores the fact..." which indicates that it should be considered as a weaken answer choice, in which case, I thought the exception to attack premises would be granted.

Or is (B) not a flaw because of the fact that, the premise "each one of the incidents in which Smith's hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other", does not actually depend on the agreement of others? The way that the sentence is structured, it seems that the sentence regarding the plausibility of each individual event is to be taken as a fact, in which other people who have read the book, would happen to agree with.

When I initially read the argument, I thought the author was saying that we can take it as fact, because everyone who read the book would agree with it - which does not seem to be the case. If my revised interpretation is correct, then the author does not ignore whats stated in (B), it actually is not even applicable to the argument.

akechi wrote:Hi All,

I need help with PT6-S2-Q14.

For those not familiar with the argument, here is the core:
C:
Smith's new novel is plausible

P:
"As anyone who has actually read the novel would agree, each one of the incidents in which Smith's Hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other."

It is clear that the author is committing the fallacy of composition, in this case, part-to-whole.

However, I still got tripped up between (B) and (D) because I thought (B) was a legitimate weakener for this question. The reason I got tripped up was because I was under the impression that it would weaken the conclusion by way of refuting the sole premise on which the argument relies. For weaken answer choices, aren't we sometimes allowed to attack the truthhood of the premises in order to weaken an argument? (B) is prefaced with "It ignores the fact..." which indicates that it should be considered as a weaken answer choice, in which case, I thought the exception to attack premises would be granted.

Or is (B) not a flaw because of the fact that, the premise "each one of the incidents in which Smith's hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other", does not actually depend on the agreement of others? The way that the sentence is structured, it seems that the sentence regarding the plausibility of each individual event is to be taken as a fact, in which other people who have read the book, would happen to agree with.

When I initially read the argument, I thought the author was saying that we can take it as fact, because everyone who read the book would agree with it - which does not seem to be the case. If my revised interpretation is correct, then the author does not ignore whats stated in (B), it actually is not even applicable to the argument.

This is a flaw question btw.

P:
"As anyone who has actually read the novel would agree, each one of the incidents in which Smith's Hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other."

C:
Smith's new novel is plausible


So we're saying that several incidents that could happen to someone or the other occur within one person (Smith's hero). This kind of sounds like the movie "Forrest Gump" when a series of unlikely events happen to one person. While it's a good movie, it is implausible that this could all happen to one person.

(D) correctly addresses the flawed reasoning here. Let's say that Smith's hero wins the lottery which is entirely plausible, but highly unlikely. Let's also say that Smith's hero also gets struck by lightning, has his legs bitten off by a shark, wins the lottery a second time, becomes pregnant with octuples and marries Jenny after she contracts HIV. I'd say that all the incidents happening to this one person are a little implausible.

(B) just simply does not address the flaw in the argument. It's like saying each reader can agree the incidents are plausible even though they aren't plausible.

akechi wrote:Hi All,

I need help with PT6-S2-Q14.

For those not familiar with the argument, here is the core:
C:
Smith's new novel is plausible

P:
"As anyone who has actually read the novel would agree, each one of the incidents in which Smith's Hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other."

It is clear that the author is committing the fallacy of composition, in this case, part-to-whole.

However, I still got tripped up between (B) and (D) because I thought (B) was a legitimate weakener for this question. The reason I got tripped up was because I was under the impression that it would weaken the conclusion by way of refuting the sole premise on which the argument relies. For weaken answer choices, aren't we sometimes allowed to attack the truthhood of the premises in order to weaken an argument? (B) is prefaced with "It ignores the fact..." which indicates that it should be considered as a weaken answer choice, in which case, I thought the exception to attack premises would be granted.

Or is (B) not a flaw because of the fact that, the premise "each one of the incidents in which Smith's hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other", does not actually depend on the agreement of others? The way that the sentence is structured, it seems that the sentence regarding the plausibility of each individual event is to be taken as a fact, in which other people who have read the book, would happen to agree with.

When I initially read the argument, I thought the author was saying that we can take it as fact, because everyone who read the book would agree with it - which does not seem to be the case. If my revised interpretation is correct, then the author does not ignore whats stated in (B), it actually is not even applicable to the argument.

Yeah I agree. If you consider the structure of the stimulus B just doesnt make sense. The author disagrees with the evaluation of the crtics, then cites the reasons why. When you apply B to the stimulus the pieces dont fit: who is agreeing with who? The opinion of the author and the critic are at odds with one another! D accurately addresses the problem. The author says that the critics are wrong (the story is plausible) because each instance that the hero is involved with is plausible. It's a classic example of asserting that something must have a quality because all of its components each individually possess that quality. Like Clyde said, the fact that a bunch of plausible events happened to one person may itself be implausible.

akechi wrote:It is clear that the author is committing the fallacy of composition, in this case, part-to-whole.

Correct. Which answer choice details this fallacy of composition?

(D) It takes for granted that a whole story will have a given characteristic if each of its parts has that characteristic.

Hey Akechi!

Clyde's got a great explanation above, but there are a few things in your post that I want to address.

akechi wrote: The reason I got tripped up was because I was under the impression that it would weaken the conclusion by way of refuting the sole premise on which the argument relies. For weaken answer choices, aren't we sometimes allowed to attack the truthhood of the premises in order to weaken an argument? (B) is prefaced with "It ignores the fact..." which indicates that it should be considered as a weaken answer choice, in which case, I thought the exception to attack premises would be granted.

As Clyde points out above, this is a Flaw question, so I'm not sure what you mean by a 'weaken answer choice'?

Are you referring to the fact that flaws can typically be stated in two different ways? ("It takes for granted that....." vs "It fails to consider that......."?)

If that's what you mean, you shouldn't think of the second one as a 'weakener', as it does something stronger than correct answers to weaken questions do: whatever the argument ignores, or fails to consider, should
DESTROY the argument. Correct answers to weaken questions simply have to make the conclusion less likely.

Also, those two phrasings for flaw answers are just that: phrasing choices. The same fundamental flaw could be stated either way, with some tweaks to the wording. If an argument is flawed because it takes for granted that Andy is a boy, then the argument is flawed because it ignores the fact that Andy might not be a boy. The negative/ignored phrasing doesn't change the rules of what you are and are not allowed to do.

Answer choices never give us permission to attack the truth of premises directly. However, I think you might be thinking of those relatively uncommon situations where the premise reports on someone else's statement - i.e., if the premise were "The news reporter said that there was an explosion downtown". In this situation, the premise that we are not allowed to question is that the news reporter SAID there was an explosion. But we don't have to accept that the news reporter was telling the truth. Is that the kind of thing you're thinking of?

If so, I think you may have misread the premise. If it had read like this, it would be a whole different ballgame:

• Everyone who has read the novel agrees that each one of the incidents in which Smith's hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other.

If THAT were the premise, then the author would be assuming that all those people that agree are actually correct, and (B) would be a perfectly valid answer.

The problem, though, is that that is not what the premise actually said. "As anyone who has actually read the novel would agree" is just a sidenote - the author is directly telling us that it's true that each incident is individually believable. He's not relying on these other people's agreement for it, that's just a bonus. So the author is locking down the truth of the fact that each incident is individually believable AND telling us that novel readers would agree about that - but they are two separate things.

It would be similar to me saying "Just like the news reporter said, there was an explosion downtown!" I'm flat out telling you there was an explosion - you can't question that anymore. I'm also telling you that the news reporter said it too.

akechi wrote: Or is (B) not a flaw because of the fact that, the premise "each one of the incidents in which Smith's hero gets involved is the kind of incident that could very well have happened to someone or other", does not actually depend on the agreement of others? The way that the sentence is structured, it seems that the sentence regarding the plausibility of each individual event is to be taken as a fact, in which other people who have read the book, would happen to agree with.

When I initially read the argument, I thought the author was saying that we can take it as fact, because everyone who read the book would agree with it - which does not seem to be the case. If my revised interpretation is correct, then the author does not ignore whats stated in (B), it actually is not even applicable to the argument.

Exactly this!

Be careful trying to attack embedded parts of premises - it's only a valid move in those rare cases in which the premise simply tells us what someone else has said or thought. Implant a strong check on yourself whenever you want to apply it, and make damn sure you have the kind of premise that allows for that.