Thanks for the question! Let me assist you with this particular question that you commented on, though if you have any other questions of course feel free to ask those. Here, we’re told that if a society encourages freedom of thought and expression, then creativity will flourish. We also know that creativity flourished in the US during the 18th century. Thus, we conclude that freedom of thought was encouraged in the US during the 18th century.
Now we’re supposed to find the answer choice that does NOT have the same error of reasoning as the passage. Note that the passage went
EFTE —> CF CF Conclusion: EFTE
Which is a mistaken reversal; you can’t conclude a sufficient condition (on the left) from a necessary condition (on the right). So now we need an answer choice that doesn’t do this.
Take a look now at (E), which tells us that if a country is democratic, then the opinion of each of its citizens must have a meaningful effect on government. But in Western democracies citizens’ opinions don’t have this effect. So Western democracies aren’t democratic. This structure is
D —> OCMEG ~OCMEG Conclusion: ~D
Which is a valid application of the negation of the necessary condition to conclude the negation of the sufficient. In simpler terms, we could take the contrapositive
~OCMEG —> ~D
And see immediately why this argument makes sense, and isn’t a case of flawed reasonings like the other ones.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
DawnJune 16, 2020
Thank you so much! this definitely helped
shunheJune 16, 2020
Glad to have helped!
Whitney-NortonSeptember 30, 2020
I don't understand, please, how this reversal is more correct than A, which does the exact same reversal?
