Sociologist:  Some people argue that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of Br...

Mehran May 13, 2018

@Richmond the difference here lies in what the rest of the answer choice says.

The point that capitalism and industrialization are distinct is used to undermine the CRITICISM cited against the claim that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism.

(A) says "against the CLAIM that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism."

(B) says "contradiction of the CLAIM that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism."

Again, this is not directed at the claim but rather the CRITICISM cited against this claim.

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

mccallevans1 November 8, 2018

Please clarify why distinguishing between industrialization and capitalism "undermine[s] the criticism of ..." Is the word "But" and indicator word that infers that the previous sentence will be refuted?

I would also like to know if on argument structure questions you can determine the structure by extracting the pure logic. Is it helpful to diagram?

If so, I diagrammed the first sentence as follows:

LDBC = Labor discipline of British Capitalism
CP = Capital punishment

LDBC >> CP
/CP >> /LDBC

Did I diagram that correctly? Sometimes I get confused with phrases like "essential part". I took that to mean that the labor discipline of British capitalism "requires" capital punishment for theft. Did I correct infer that capital punishment is the necessary condition?

Ravi December 22, 2018

@mccallevans1,

Happy to help. Below, I'll explain how we can arrive at the correct answer and confidently eliminate the others. Regarding your question on the word "but," this word often signals a change in opinion, and it frequently reveals the author's opinion. In this case, the word "but" is introducing a counterpoint to the one that was made in the previous sentence.

In order to see how answer choice E is correct, let's first make sure we have the strongest possible grasp of the stimulus.

The structure of the stimulus is that some people are arguing for something, critics of this view pointing out something, and then the sociologist points out something that the critics' point is overlooking.

In other words, we have an argument, a counter to that argument, and then a counter to that counter-argument. This is the general structure of the stimulus.

Because we now have a strong understanding of the structure of the stimulus, we will be able to easily eliminate the wrong answer choices and identify the correct one.

The question stem asks us to identify the role played in the passage by the point that capitalism and industrialization are distinct. This means we need to identify the role of the last sentence of the stimulus.

As noted above in our mapping of the structure of this stimulus, the last sentence is where the sociologist points out a flaw in the critics' argument against the view that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism.

Answer A does not match the last sentence. What A says is that this last sentence is used as evidence against the argument in the first sentence, and this is not what the last sentence does.

Answer B does not match either. The last sentence is not directly contradicting what is said in the first sentence; rather, it is undermining the critics' viewpoint on the argument made in the first sentence.

Answer C is wrong; the last sentence in no way attempts to conclusively prove that that capital punishment for theft was an essential part of the labor discipline of British capitalism. All it's doing is undermining the critics' argument.

Answer D is completely wrong; it is not supporting the critics' argument, it's undermining it.

Answer E is exactly what we're looking for. It paraphrases what we said the last sentence did when we were analyzing the stimulus. The last sentence is an attempt to undermine the criticism cited against the claim made in the first sentence. This is our answer.

Regarding your question about diagramming, you correctly diagrammed the first sentence, but you also need to make sure that you qualify your conditional statement by writing something above it noting that this conditional statement applies to the subset of people who argue it (i.e., 'some people').

For this question, you could diagram, but in my opinion, diagramming this question is unnecessary. If you focus on understanding the structure of the stimulus up front, you can answer this question relatively fast without diagramming.