Flawed Parallel Reasoning Questions - - Question 21

From the observation that each member of a group could possess a characteristic, it is fallacious to conclude immedia...

MichelleRod August 31, 2017

Choice D

So I can't quite articulate why answer choice D isn't committing the same fallacy as the stimulus and answer choice C. Can you plead help me out?

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Mehran September 3, 2017

Hi @MichelleRod, thanks for your post. This is a Flawed Parallel Reasoning question.

The flaw described in the stimulus is that, just because each member of a group could possess a characteristic, it is fallacious to conclude immediately that it is possible for all the group's members to possess that characteristic.

Answer choice (C) illustrates this flaw: each member of a group ("each of many nominees") could possess a characteristic ("could be appointed to any one of the three openings on the committee"). Yet it is fallacious to conclude immediately that it is possible for ALL the group's members (all the nominees) to possess that characteristic (appointment to the committee openings).

Answer choice (D) does not include members of a group. It's just one coin; each toss has a 50/50 chance of a single outcome. Aggregating these outcomes is a different flaw than assuming that each member of a group of several can possess the same characteristic just because that characteristic is in the realm of possibility.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional questions.