The great medieval universities had no administrators, yet they endured for centuries. Our university has a huge admi...
Vennela-VellankiJuly 7, 2020
Isn't the flaw in this passage temporal?
I'm struggling to figure out the best approach in narrowing down what flaws we are considering as the ones that need to be paralleled in the answer choices. Isn't the flaw in this passage also temporal?
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Thanks for the question! So the flaw isn’t really about temporality; the core flaw is really about causality here. The stimulus assumes that the relationship here is causal instead of just correlation. The stimulus talks about how great medieval universities had no administrators, but endured for centuries, while their university has an administrative staff with financial difficulties. Thus, the argument concludes to get rid of the administrators. So the idea is that the administrators are causing the financial difficulties, when really, that might not necessarily be the case. Indeed, it’s possibly the difficulties that are causing the need for administrators, or they’re both caused by something else. Either way, the argument assumes that one thing causes another, and that assumption isn’t necessarily warranted. That’s the main flaw here, and the one that’s reflected in the correct answer choice.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
