Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 5
The press reports on political campaigns these days as if they were chess games. One candidate's campaign advisor mak...
alicat6June 27, 2020
I thought the stimulus already stated the correct answer
I thought the stimulus already stated the correct answer. The conclusion states, "It is clear that the campaign advisors should stay out of the limelight and let the press report on the most revealing positions on substantive issues the candidates have taken." Doesn't this mean that we already know the candidates have taken positions on substantive issues, because the author is stating it? I thought the correct answer choice was just redundant for what was already known, so I didn't choose it.
Any advice on how to distinguish when statements are made and how to know if it is missing a premise? To me, the author already said that candidates take positions on substantive issues, so I am having a hard time understanding how this was a missing assumption in the stimulus.
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Thanks for the question! So lets’ take a careful look at that sentence. Campaign advisors should stay out of the limelight and let the press report on the most revealing positions on substantive issues the candidates have taken. Does that actually EXPLICITLY say that candidates take positions on substantive policy issues? Well, actually, no. Because the subject of the sentence isn’t even about candidates. It’s about the press and campaign advisors, and what they should do. But it does assume that candidates do something. And what exactly does it assume? That candidates take positions on substantive issues; otherwise, the sentence you mentioned doesn’t make much sense. But it doesn’t really directly say it as much as rely on that fact in the sentence, which is why it’s still an assumption. Generally speaking, it has to be a paraphrase of a sentence in the passage for the statement to have been made in the passage. And the bare sentence “candidates take positions on substantive policy issues” is pretty different in meaning from “campaign advisors shouldn’t draw attention and let the press report on positions.”
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
