Q14 - Herbalist: Many of my customers find that

[uhdang]

Very good question to see how Ad Hominem, or source attack, flaw has been made!

Here is the Core:

Many finds drinking juice with certain herbs good for improving physical coordination. + A few doctors assert potential harmful effect from them + but they are always trying to maintain monopoly over therapies
==>
there is no reason not to try my herb juice.

@ Instead of attacking the argument made by doctors, the author is attacking characteristics of doctors as proponents of their tendency. This is Ad Hominem, or a source attack, flaw.

===== Here are answer analyses =====

A) “Fear of the consequences of rejecting the claim” is not happening. If this were to be true, Herbalists would say something like, "if you don't try my juice, your physical coordination will become similar to that of E.T. (No offense to E.T.)!"

B) Premises and conclusion are on the same scope of “why one should try my herbal juice.” No inconsistency.

C) Exactly what we have discussed above. Correct.

D) Circular reasoning not present.

E) Correlation - Causation flaw not happening here.

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Flaw: Uses an ad hominem attack to substantiate the conclusion

A) Descriptively inaccurate. The Herbalist doesn't attempt to justify the conclusion by inducing fear of the consequences of rejecting the conclusion.
B) The premises aren't inconsistent.
C) Bingo! The author uses an ad hominem attack against the doctors to justify his conclusion.
D) This is just an abstract way of saying: The premise presupposes the truth of the conclusion it is trying to support which is not true. There is no circular reasoning in this argument.
E) The author make a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy i.e., concluding that there exists a casual relationship due to a correlation. All the said was that the physical coordination of some of his customers improved after drinking juice containing certain herbs.

[VendelaG465]

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this is not a corr. vs. causation flaw? Can you please explain how it isn't? I had noticed the Ad Hominem flaw but figured since corr. vs. causation is more common I'd scope out an answer choice closer to that.

[ohthatpatrick]

Since I just typed up a response to you in a different thread, in which I detailed common phrasings for CORRELATIONS and examples of CAUSAL VERBS, I don't want to re-hash that here (but read that one first if you haven't already).

Is the conclusion a CAUSAL claim?

Not really. "There is no reason not to try my herb juice" is not claiming that ONE THING leads to ANOTHER.

Does the evidence contain a CORRELATION?

Not really.

"Many customers find their coordination improves" is close to a correlation, but since "many" = "at least a handful", it's not what we would usually call a correlation.

Nevertheless, you could potentially like (E) if the argument said:

Many of my customers find their coordination improves after drinking my herb juice.
Therefore, my herb juice improves people's coordination.

However, this author's conclusion does not make a causal claim that the herb juice causes better coordination.

The author doesn't conclude that there IS a reason to try his herb juice (had the author done that, she would have presumably been thinking, "The reason you SHOULD try my juice is that it apparently causes better coordination")

Instead, the author's conclusion is that there's no reason NOT to try the juice.

So to analyze her reasoning, it's irrelevant to us whether there are any real or supposed reasons FOR trying the juice.

It's only relevant to us whether there are any real or supposed reasons AGAINST trying the juice.

Hence, we need to address the doctors' assertion that there IS a reason AGAINST trying the juice (it's potentially harmful). The way our author dismisses this potential reason against trying the juice is not a legitimate way of dismissing that concern.