Tanya would refrain from littering if everyone else refrained from littering. None of her friends litter, and therefo...

Sid July 9, 2020

Why is A incorrect?

I understand how E can be the correct answer, but I don't feel as though the explanation for why A is incorrect is sufficient for me. The reasoning states that some residents of the neighborhood is not a subgroup of the larger group that is all residents. I do not understand how that makes any sense; "some residents" definitely seems like a subgroup of "all residents". Can anyone help me understand why A is incorrect?

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shunhe July 10, 2020

Hi @Sid,

Thanks for the question! Yeah, I’m not too sure about this answer choice explanation. I think the reason I would identify this as incorrect is because the flaw is just different. The flaw in the stimulus basically uses a subgroup (her friends refraining) as a stand-in for the whole group (everyone refraining) in the conditional reasoning (specifically, in the sufficient condition). So we can see how (E) matches that. But (A) has a different flaw. It goes from “all residents have some goals” to the residents must share all their goals (or at least that one specific interest), and that action is happening in the necessary condition.

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

Brett-Lindsay July 12, 2020

I looked at it as if it were discussing two separate subgroups of one overarching group.

All residents of the same neighborhood have some goals in common. One group of neighborhood residents wants improvements made to a local park, so some other residents of that neighborhood must share this goal.

"All residents of the same neighborhood" is the overarching group.
"One group" is the first subgroup.
"some other residents" is the other subgroup.

It seems like it's saying something like:
"All humans have hair. Some humans have brown hair. Therefore, some other humans must also have brown hair."

They could have brown hair (or red hair or any other color hair).