Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 8
How do the airlines expect to prevent commercial plane crashes? Studies have shown that pilot error contributes to tw...
AndrewArabieDecember 1, 2022
Treating S w/ N as must be trues
Emil gave an office hour on how he thinks S w/ N should be approached as must be trues. You should ask "what must the author believe to derive this conclusion?" I've been using that strategy with success but this question in particular highlights where that strategy is more effective fulfilling the two criteria:
1. Does it strengthen?
2. If negated, does the argument collapse?
If you negate C, it takes a while to understand if it collapses the argument or has no effect. You can easily talk yourself into C collapsing the argument.
If you look at D, however, and ask "must the author believe this?" the answer is unequivocally yes. If you ask the same thing about C, you can look at the conclusion and see how weak it is to realize the author does not necessarily have to believe C to be true to derive his conclusion.
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I actually did another office hour a day or two after you posted this explicitly about the similarities between the two! Wrong answer choices are often something the author would likely agree with, but is either too extreme, or a related but not guaranteed idea, like C is here.
