Joshua Smith's new novel was criticized by the book editor for The Daily Standard as implausible. That criticism, lik...
ShannonOh22August 10, 2019
Very tricky Question...Help on A and D answer choices
The wording in several of the answer choices to this question are ambiguous enough to warrant some discussion...I definitely would have missed this question, as the correct answer (apparently D?) was not even on my list of contenders. Bear with me a second here while I get my thoughts out...
A) "it relies on the assumption that a criticism can legitimately be dismissed as unwarranted if it is offered by someone who had previously displayed questionable judgement"
- the author writes "That criticism, like so many other criticisms from the same source in the past, is completely unwarranted."
Does this not very clearly illustrate the author's stance on the book editor from The Daily Standard as having "questionable judgement" when he says "so many other criticisms from the same source" are also "unwarranted"? The inclusion of that clause creates a lot of room for interpretation in this answer, and it is true from a general standpoint that the author has a strong opinion of this book editor - one that is not positive, nor is it unbiased. Though he does not explicitly say "I think that book editor has questionable judgement", it is very clearly implied in the passage to be the case.
Answer choice D) "It takes for granted that a whole story will have a given characteristic if each of its parts has that characteristic" doesn't really apply here...the author says "each one of the incidents in which Smith's hero gets involved"...thereby inferring ALL relevant incidents throughout the WHOLE book..."is the kind of incident that could very well have happened" to anyone. Here, the author of the stimulus is clearly stating he believes the entire book is plausible, so he is not making an assumption of part to whole.
Please help me to better understand, thanks again for your help!
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It is a tricky question! The question asks us to identify 'the most serious" error of reasoning in the argument. It is true that the author tells that this unwarranted criticism comes from "the same source" as some of the past one, but the author does not RELY on this fact to dismiss this criticism. He is not saying - because this criticism came from an editor with a prior history of questionable criticism, it must be unwarranted. Instead, the author proceeds with providing specific evidence in support of his conclusion that the criticism is unwarranted by saying that each of the incidents could very well have happened to someone. Since this information regarding "the same source in the past" is not offered in furtherance of the argument, we cannot conclude that the author "relies on [this] assumption," as (A) claims.
(D) correctly summarizes the flaw in the argument. The author argues that just because each of the incidents could have happened to someone, then it means all the incidents taken together could have happened to the same person as well, and the book as a whole is plausible. This flawed reasoning uses evidence demonstrating that discrete parts of the book are plausible to conclude that the whole book is plausible. Because it is improper to make a judgment regarding the whole story based on a characteristic of each of its parts, this is the correct answer choice.
