Joshi is clearly letting campaign contributions influence his vote in city council. His campaign for re-election has ...

Jimmywantstogotolawschool on April 17, 2020

Why not A?

I don’t understand why c is the answer over a

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shunhe on April 18, 2020

Hi @Jimmywantstogotolawschool,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at the stimulus first. The author’s arguing that Joshi’s letting campaign contributions influence his city council vote. Why? Because his campaign for re-election receives more support from property developers than any other city councilor has gotten, and his voting record helps property developers.

First, to clear something up, the correct answer is actually (D), not (C). Now, let’s take a look at why (D) is correct. (D) tells us that the argument presumes that one thing is the cause of another when it could easily be an effect of it. In other words, the argument presumes that the financial support from property developers caused his voting record to favor the interests of property developers, when it could easily be the case that his voting record favors their interests, and that’s why they support him. In this case, Joshi wouldn’t be letting the contributions influence his vote, and this is a major problem with the argument.

Now, let’s take a look at why (C) is wrong. (C) is wrong because the author doesn’t really make a moral judgment. A moral judgment would have an “ought” or “should” kind of statement in it, or would definitively say something is ethically good or bad. But there’s no such judgment being made here, and so (C) isn’t a problem of the argument.

The issue with (A) is that it introduces the idea of sequential events. We don’t actually know which came first, and so this author doesn’t make the argument based on a sequence of events. The author is making an argument based on a correlation between a voting record and money, but not one that’s temporally based.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have. And I like the username! ¨?

Jimmywantstogotolawschool on April 20, 2020

Thanks Shunhe! Still hoping haha

shunhe on April 20, 2020

No problem, glad I could help!