The author uses the word "immediacy" (line 39) most likely in order to express
hfatima1on May 15, 2020
Question 8
On example 8, I did the contrapositive of the first sentence. Thus, when I did so, I found the flaw was that they just reversed. However, you did not find the contrapositive? On flaw questions, are we not supposed to find the contrapositive and only work with what they give us?
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I find it is good practice to always diagram both the statement and its contrapositive on all question types. There is no specific type of question for which you should never find the contrapositive.
The reason that Mehran did not find the contrapositive here is because it was unnecessary to do so.
Premise: If the law punished littering, then the city has an obligation to provide trash cans.
PL --> OPTC
Conclusion: but the law does not punish littering, so the city has no such obligation
Not PL --> No OPTC
Therefore, the flaw here is not that the statement was reversed, but that the statement was simply negated.
While you could argue that the flaw here is that they simply reversed the contrapositive, it is easier in this case to view the flaw as an improper negation as it requires fewer steps when going through the answer choices and comparing their flaws to the one made by the author of the passage. You would only have to negate the premise as opposed to diagramming the statement, finding the contrapositive, and then reversing the contrapositive.
All of this being said, i would still recommend always diagramming both the statement and its contrapositive - even if you don't end up using the contrapositive - at least until you become comfortable with S&N statements and can start to recognize flaws more readily.
Hope this is helpful! Please let us know if you have any further questions.
