If you know a lot about history, it will be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals. But unfortunately,...

Jacob-R March 17, 2019

Hi @maybeillgetlucky

Here is how I would think about this argument and question — hopefully seeing how I do it helps answer your question about how one finds the flaw.

Premise 1: Know a lot about history -> easy to impress people who are intellectuals.

(The contrapositive of this premise: Not easy to impress people who are intellectuals -> don’t know a lot about history.)

Premise 2: Haven’t read a large number of books -> won’t know much about history.

Conclusion: Haven’t read books and therefore don’t know much about history -> won’t be easy to impress people who are intellectuals.

Does that conclusion follow from any combination of either premise or their contrapositives? No! At most, the conclusion is restating premise 2 (“not well versed in history due to a lack of reading” is the same thing as if haven’t read a large number of books -> won’t know much about history).

But then it jumps to the conclusion that it will not be easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals. We can’t get to that in combination with premise 1, or its contrapositive. Premise 1 tells us something about people who DO know a lot about history, and the contrapositive tells us something about people for whom we already know it is not easy to impress intellectuals.

The answer, therefore, needs to express that logical flaw. None of the premises or contrapositives tell us what the ONLY easy ways to impress intellectuals are: instead, we only learned about 1: if one knows a lot of history. It is entirely possible, therefore, that one may easily impress people who are intellectuals even if one is not well versed in history.

And that is exactly what answer D says! There may be other easy ways to impress intellectuals that do not involve knowing history.

I hope that helps! Please let us know if you have further questions.

ShannonOh22 July 29, 2019

What about answer choice B? It states "there are people who learn about history who do not impress intellectuals" - which does follow, because the passage only says one will impress intellectuals if you "know a lot about history", but does not say that reading history books is the ONLY way to learn history - it is merely an example. So it would be possible for one to LEARN about history by reading history books, but not to retain the information, therefore to not KNOW "a lot about history", therefore not having the ability to "impress intellectuals"...?

shunhe May 2, 2020

Hi @ShannonOh22,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at (B), which tells us that there are people who learn about history who do not impress intellectuals. First off, it’s actually questionable as to whether or not this is something the author overlooks, since the author only says that knowing a lot about history makes it easy for you to impress people who are intellectuals, not that everybody who knows a lot about history does, in fact, actually impress intellectuals. The author’s claim isn’t that strong.

Also, even if the argument did believe that, it wouldn’t be a flaw in the reasoning. It might be true that the author overlooks it, but this isn’t the issue that causes the conclusion to be invalidly reached based on the premises, and so (B) cannot be the right answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.