Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 11

In a large residential building, there is a rule that no pets are allowed. A group of pet lovers tried to change that...

Anusha-Ramjattan April 1, 2020

question 11 why not B?

i chose B because the prompt said "it follows that the pet lovers were voted down on their proposal by the majority of the tenants." What I understood was that if the "majority of the tenants voted down" then they must have achieved the 10% of the signatures to be able to get to the second step which is a vote. What am I misinterpreting?

Replies
Create a free account to read and take part in forum discussions.

Already have an account? log in

shunhe April 2, 2020

Hi @Anusha-Ramjattan,

Thanks for the question! (B) isn’t necessarily the answer because the argument doesn’t assume that less than 10% of tenants signed the petition, it actually assumes the opposite. We know that the proposal lost a majority vote based on the last sentence of the stimulus, which means that a vote had to have happened. After al, you can’t lose a vote that didn’t happen. But if the vote happened, then we know that at least 10% of tenants signed the petition, because if this wasn’t the case, then the vote wouldn’t have happened. So the argument depends actually on the falsity of (B), and (B) can’t be the correct answer. (A), which states the opposite of (B), is the correct answer choice for this reason. Based on what you wrote in your message, it seems that you might have read the answer choices wrong, since your reasoning is right. They must have achieved the 10% of signatures to be able to get to the vote, but this is what (A) says, not (B).

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

Anusha-Ramjattan April 5, 2020

ahh! I see now. You are right i completely read A wrong.
Thank you!

shunhe April 14, 2020

Glad I helped!