The logical relationship of lines 8—13 of the passage to lines 23—25 and 49—53 of the passage is most accurately desc...

shunhe on July 2, 2020

Hi @TimB,

Thanks for the question! So (A) talks about a general assertion being SUPPORTED by two specific observations, whereas (C) talks about a general assertion ENTAILING two more specific assertions. The entailment vs supported is going to be the main differentiator between these two (although you could also say that observations and assertions are different things).

Let’s pull apart what they mean exactly. For an assertion to be supported by an observation just means that the observation serves as evidence. For example, asserting someone is the killer because you saw them leave the house around the murder. So a general assertion with two specific observations would be like that: an assertion (X is the killer) because of two observations (saw them leave the house, they had a knife).

An assertion entailing two more specific assertions, however, means that the first assertion implies the two following ones. For example, take the assertion “X is the killer” again. Well, what does this imply? It implies that someone died, since if no one died, you couldn’t call someone a killer; this is another assertion entailed by the first one. Here’s another assertion it implies: X exists, since if X didn’t exist, then they couldn’t be the killer (being non-existent). So a general assertion can entail two more specific ones in that manner, which is way different from being supported by two observations.

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