If the glee club pays cash today to rent the equipment it needs for next Saturday's party, its usual rental agency wi...

jakennedy on January 13, 2022

Great question.

Remember that this is a strengthen with necessary premise question, so the correct answer choice must be necessary but it also must strengthen the argument.

D. This answer choice does not necessarily strengthen. In fact, it may even weaken the argument. The conclusion is that “the committee clearly cares little about saving money”. If answer choice D is true, you could argue that the committee does care about saving money, but that they have other priorities that are more important. This is a potential alternative explanation as to why they are waiting until next Saturday to pay.

The negation: The club’s party committee does not have a number of responsibilities that take priority over saving money.

For the reasons stated above, this negation does not destroy the argument. If the committee has no greater responsibility than saving money, yet the committee is still making decisions that will lose them money, it is reasonable to suggest that they must not care much about saving money.

E. This strengthens because it rules out the alternative explanation that the committee simply cannot yet afford to make the payment.

The negation: There is not enough cash available to the glee club today to pay for the equipment rental at today’s lower price.

This would destroy the argument because it would suggest that the only reason they didn’t pay was due to a lack of available funds.

General Negation Test Note: Notice how this negation does not necessarily destroy the conclusion itself; the committee could very well have no funds yet still not care about money. When doing the negation test, you should ask whether it destroys the argument, not the conclusion. That is, if the conclusion no longer follows from the evidence, the argument is destroyed, even if you can think of some alternative way in which the conclusion could still be true. With the negation of answer choice E, the argument would be destroyed because the conclusion would no longer follow from the evidence.