Voter: Our prime minister is evidently seeking a job at an international organization. Anyone seeking a job at an int...

jakennedy on January 13, 2022

Hi @Rita,

On parallel flaw quesitons, we want to identify the flaw and then find the same flaw in the answer choices.

The first sentence in this stimulus is the conclusion, so the evidence begins with sentence two. Sentence two has the sufficient indicator word “anyone”, indicating that it is diagrammable. The diagram should look like the following:

Seeking a job at an international organization ? spend a lot of time traveling abroad.

We are then told that the prime minister spends a lot of time traveling. The problem is, “spend a lot of time traveling” is the necessary condition of the premise, not the sufficient condition, yet the voter treated it like a sufficient condition.

In other words, if we have:

A ? B

And B exists, we cannot conclude that A exists.

So the flaw is a bad contrapositive. They reversed the conditional statement, but they did not negate.

Now let’s look at answer choice A. Again, the first sentence is the conclusion. The evidence says that most people who run for office play golf:

Run for office -most? play golf

Since Kao plans to run for office, the conclude that Kao must be a golfer. This is a flaw as well, but it is not the same type of flaw. Rather than reversing without negating, it is a quantifier flaw. Since the flaws do not match, A is incorrect.

jakennedy on January 13, 2022

Hi @Rita,

On parallel flaw quesitons, we want to identify the flaw and then find the same flaw in the answer choices.

The first sentence in this stimulus is the conclusion, so the evidence begins with sentence two. Sentence two has the sufficient indicator word “anyone”, indicating that it is diagrammable. The diagram should look like the following:

Seeking a job at an international organization ? spend a lot of time traveling abroad.

We are then told that the prime minister spends a lot of time traveling. The problem is, “spend a lot of time traveling” is the necessary condition of the premise, not the sufficient condition, yet the voter treated it like a sufficient condition.

In other words, if we have:

A ? B

And B exists, we cannot conclude that A exists.

So the flaw is a bad contrapositive. They reversed the conditional statement, but they did not negate.

Now let’s look at answer choice A. Again, the first sentence is the conclusion. The evidence says that most people who run for office play golf:

Run for office -most? play golf

Since Kao plans to run for office, the conclude that Kao must be a golfer. This is a flaw as well, but it is not the same type of flaw. Rather than reversing without negating, it is a quantifier flaw. Since the flaws do not match, A is incorrect.

jakennedy on January 13, 2022

Hi @Rita,

On parallel flaw quesitons, we want to identify the flaw and then find the same flaw in the answer choices.

The first sentence in this stimulus is the conclusion, so the evidence begins with sentence two. Sentence two has the sufficient indicator word “anyone”, indicating that it is diagrammable. The diagram should look like the following:

Seeking a job at an international organization ? spend a lot of time traveling abroad.

We are then told that the prime minister spends a lot of time traveling. The problem is, “spend a lot of time traveling” is the necessary condition of the premise, not the sufficient condition, yet the voter treated it like a sufficient condition.

In other words, if we have:

A ? B

And B exists, we cannot conclude that A exists.

So the flaw is a bad contrapositive. They reversed the conditional statement, but they did not negate.

Now let’s look at answer choice A. Again, the first sentence is the conclusion. The evidence says that most people who run for office play golf:

Run for office -most? play golf

Since Kao plans to run for office, the conclude that Kao must be a golfer. This is a flaw as well, but it is not the same type of flaw. Rather than reversing without negating, it is a quantifier flaw. Since the flaws do not match, A is incorrect.