E is irrelevent to what saunders states with the last statement. " the overwhelming success of the demolition strategy, however, proves that the major, who favored demolition, were right and those who claimed the problem could and should be solved by rehabilitating the houses were wrong."
Knowing the threat wouldn't have made a difference in understanding why why rehabilitating the houses were wrong. If we did rehabilitate wouldn't that have made the threat go away? What we DONT know is evidence proving that this suggesting was wrong. Answer choice D explains that disconnect.
RyanSpencerMay 7, 2019
I'm confused on this question. Wouldn't knowing the threat help us determine who was right and who was wrong? What if the threat was broken glass on the ground... rehabilitating the houses could have solved that threat...
RaviMay 10, 2019
@hallerae, @AlexM, @rweyer, and @RyanSpencer,
Happy to help. The argument makes the conclusion that because a given option worked, it was correct to select that particular option. The issue with this is that the other option may have solved the problem as well. The argument is making the assumption that because one strategy worked, it was the only possible strategy that could have worked. This is flawed, as there could have been other strategies that could have worked as well.
(D) says, "offers no evidence that the policy advocated by Saunders’ opponents would not have succeeded if it had been given the chance"
(D) picks up on precisely what we identified as the argument's flaw. We know that the demolition strategy was successful in solving the safety problem. However, the other strategy may have also worked. The argument makes the flaw of claiming that because the demolition strategy worked, the other strategy (rehabilitation) would not have worked. (D) is the correct answer.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!
