It is even more important that we criticize democracies that have committed human rights violations than that we crit...
MazenMarch 21, 2020
Review Explanation: Argument versus set of facts
Hello,
The "review" explanation renders the stimulus a set of facts. However, the first sentence seems to be the main point/conclusion the argument is trying to make.
Even though there is no structural indicators, except perhaps for the word "further" in the last sentence, the first sentence feels like the natural culmination of the other sentences. The first sentence is: "It is even more important that we criticize democracies that have committed human rights violations than that we criticize dictatorships that have committed more violent human rights offenses."
Am I incorrect?
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You are correct. The first statement is a conclusion and the following statements are being made to support it. However, the question asks you to figure out what is a proper inference from the passage. So, you're looking for an answer choice that is another conclusion that you can draw from the passage.
(B) does just that. Sentence 2 of the passage tells us that human rights violations by democracies are worse than those by dictators. And Sentence 1 tells us we must criticize democracies who violate human rights more than dictators who do it in a more violent manner. Combining these ideas, we can infer that some human rights violations by democracies are more reprehensible than really violent violations by dictators.
MazenMarch 21, 2020
Annie,
Your point -- even though the stimulus is an argument, additional 100% supported conclusions may still be inferred based on the statements of the stimulus -- is well taken.
My point is that according to the lecture, which are great by the way, the very first step in any logical reasoning question is to identify whether the stimulus is an argument or a set of facts. I identified it as an argument, whereas the review explanation has it identified as a set of facts. As the result of this discrepancy I got a little bit concerned because as you know, identifying whether the stimulus is an argument or a set o facts is critical to identifying the conclusion which itself is critical to the demanded task.
