People's political behavior frequently does not match their rhetoric. Although many complain about government interv...
andreaskormusisJuly 21, 2020
Understanding the Answer
So I cant seem to understand why the answer is what it is. I understand that there are multiple conclusions and that changes the answer from what many people may have thought it was, but I'm still not sure what to consider as the reasoning for the answer. The question states that people wont reelect inactive politicians, but will elect politicians with behavior they don't like. What is the reasoning for this? Is it because the inactive politician does nothing but the one they don't like does things? Am I looking to deep into the meanings? Also what did the sentence about laws that influence voters lives have to do with the answer?
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Thanks for the question! Don’t think too much about why the stimulus says what it says. Remember, we’re supposed to accept that whatever the stimulus says is fact. So if the stimulus tells us that people won’t reelect inactive politicians, and will elect politicians with behaviors they don’t like, we accept that as a fact. The reason they don’t reelect inactive politicians (for this question) is irrelevant. The reason they reelect politicians whose behavior they resent is given to us in the passage: people resent government intervention, but still vote for politicians who end up having the government intervene in their lives, and so in that sense, they reelect politicians whose behavior they resent.
As for the argument having multiple conclusions, you’re totally right about that. The structure of the argument is as follows:
Premise 1: People complain about government intervention Premise 2: People don’t reelect inactive politicians (who presumably would intervene less in people’s lives) Premise 3: Politician’s activity consists of government intervention Intermediate conclusion: Voters often reelect politicians whose behavior they resent (from premises 1 and 3) Main conclusion: People’s political behavior frequently doesn’t match their rhetoric (from intermediate conclusion and premise 2)
And so we see that people not reelecting inactive politicians is a premise that supports a conclusion—an intermediate conclusion, not the main conclusion, but a conclusion nonetheless. And so (B) is correct.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
andreaskormusisJuly 22, 2020
Oh wow see that makes total sense when its actually broken down. Thanks so much!
