To become an expert on a musical instrument, a person must practice. If people practice a musical instrument for thre...
AddisonPattonAugust 19, 2019
A vs C
I chose B as the correct answer but I am just curious to know if my thinking is correct. It sounds to me like answer choices A and C are saying the same thing in a way (that you absolutely have to practice for 3 hours every day in order to become an expert). Am I correct in thinking this or am I misunderstanding the answer choices?
Reply
Create a free account to read and
take part in forum discussions.
Let's briefly look at the structure of the argument:
To become an expert, a person must practice.
Expert -> practice
If people practice for three hours a day, they will eventually become experts.
Practice 3x -> expert
Therefore, if a person is an expert, that person must have practiced for at least 3 hours a day.
Expert -> practice 3x.
This is flawed logic because it confuses a sufficient condition - practice 3 x - with a necessary condition - expert. We can conclude that if one practices 3x a day, this fact guarantees that one will become an expert. But we cannot conclude that if one is an expert, he must have practiced three hours a day because he could have practiced a different amount of time/ on a different schedule. Per our first premise, we see that for one to be an expert, one must practice but we cannot conclude that it must be 3x a day.
Your intuition with (A) and (C) is correct. (A) is incorrect because the argument's conclusion tells us that "if one is an expert..then..", hence, we only consider a scenario where one is an expert is true, so a scenario where one is not an expert is irrelevant. (C) describes the contrapositive of the conclusion - ~ practice 3 x-> ~ expert. Since this statement is logically equivalent to the conclusion, the conclusion does in fact take into account this possibility.
