Q19 - Anger in response to insults

[wayne_palmer10]

This is a sufficient assumption question. The correct answer is (C), yet I did not ultimately choose this answer because of the word "any." I felt that this was too strong. Any explanation for this question would be appreciated!

[aileenann]

This is a great question because it highlights where scope and degree matter and where they matter less. This kind of question is essentially asking you what you can add to the premises to enable a conclusion to be drawn. More specifically, it is not cabining you within the scope and degree of the premises already present in the argument, since it is inviting you to add to the premises. This is the basic reason why the word "any" is not problematic. We can pick anything we want to be true, so in such a case there is no disadvantage to making an extremely broad statement. In fact, the broader the statement in this case, the more likely it will cover what we want it to cover.

Given that general response, let's take a look at answer choice (C), keeping in mind what we know already from the premises. (C) tells us that anger is not reasonable in response to actions that should cause pity or gratitude. Couple this with the premises, which tell us that any insult should cause either pity or gratitude (like a binary logic game, every insult has to be in one of those categories: pity or gratitude - do you see why?). Hence, we know that for those two categories, there should not be anger, and we know that all insults fall into one of those two categories. Therefore, insults in those categories (all insults) should not cause anger - and anger in response is unreasonable, thus bringing us back to the argument's conclusion and reinforcing it.

[u2manish]

Hi there,

Can someone walk us though this question via diagramming. I found this one to be difficult: it may have been easy for some...!

Thanks,
M

[ohthatpatrick]

The first step to diagramming / understanding the argument we're trying to prove is to find the conclusion.

Sufficient Assumption almost always hands you conclusion trigger words (thus, hence, so, therefore, etc.) or premise trigger words (because, since, for, after all).

As soon as I see the "for" in the second half of the 1st sentence, I know that my conclusion was the first half of that sentence. (Any claim being supported by a premise is a conclusion -- of course on trickier questions, it could be a subsidiary conclusion, not the main conclusion)

Conc: Anger in response to insults --> Unreasonable

Prem:
Insults = assertions about someone's characteristics
Assertion false --> you should pity ignorance
Assertion true --> you should be grateful for the info

One shortcut we have on Sufficient Assumption is to look for any words in the Conc that never appeared in the Premises. Since Sufficient Assumption wants us to logically (i.e. mathematically) prove the conclusion, all the terms in the conclusion need to match up verbatim (or an equivalent paraphrase) with our supporting evidence.

What terms in the conclusion have not yet been used/defined in the evidence? "Anger" and "Unreasonable"

You can scan for answers that have those terms and find that only (B) and (C) are in the running.

I would never be able to prove a statement about "anger" until I have a premise about "anger". Since the premises of this argument never mentioned "anger", my answer choice is going to have to. So (A), (D), and (E) don't even warrant my attention.

Trying to diagram (B) vs. (C) is not going to be easy or particularly useful.

(B) essentially says:
Anger in response to useful info --> Unreasonable

That looks a lot like our conclusion:
Anger in response to insults --> Unreasonable

Can we fairly say from the premises that "insults" = "useful info"? Almost, but that's only in cases in which the insults are accurate. We could prove that "anger in response to accurate insults is unreasonable". But that's not our conclusion.

(C) says:
Pity or gratitude should be prompted --> Anger unreasonable

We could slightly re-word how we originally diagrammed the conclusion to make it look closer to this:
In response to insults --> Anger unreasonable

So now we're asking ourselves if the premises told us that "in response to insults" = "pity or gratitude should be prompted".

They did, since an insult will always either be true or false, and each of those cases should prompt either pity or gratitude.

It's hard to put that all together in one linear looking logic chain, but if we had to try:

True insult --> should evoke gratitude
+
False insult --> should evoke pity
=
insult --> should evoke gratitude or pity

+
should evoke gratitude or pity --> anger unreasonable
=
insult --> anger unreasonable

I would encourage you not to try to force every Sufficient Assumption question into a diagram, since it's often more trouble then it's worth. If you see a chain of conditional logic, you definitely could benefit from diagramming. If not, it's probably not going to make understanding the missing link any easier.

I would encourage you to always scan the conclusion for new, undefined terms. Sometimes it's a real easy way to eliminate a few answers (occasionally it gets you all the way to the correct answer ... for example, look at Q21 in this same section ... the new/undefined wording in the conclusion makes (E) the only contender).

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have questions.

[contropositive]

The first step to diagramming / understanding the argument we're trying to prove is to find the conclusion.

Sufficient Assumption almost always hands you conclusion trigger words (thus, hence, so, therefore, etc.) or premise trigger words (because, since, for, after all).

As soon as I see the "for" in the second half of the 1st sentence, I know that my conclusion was the first half of that sentence. (Any claim being supported by a premise is a conclusion -- of course on trickier questions, it could be a subsidiary conclusion, not the main conclusion)

Conc: Anger in response to insults --> Unreasonable

Prem:
Insults = assertions about someone's characteristics
Assertion false --> you should pity ignorance
Assertion true --> you should be grateful for the info

One shortcut we have on Sufficient Assumption is to look for any words in the Conc that never appeared in the Premises. Since Sufficient Assumption wants us to logically (i.e. mathematically) prove the conclusion, all the terms in the conclusion need to match up verbatim (or an equivalent paraphrase) with our supporting evidence.

What terms in the conclusion have not yet been used/defined in the evidence? "Anger" and "Unreasonable"

You can scan for answers that have those terms and find that only (B) and (C) are in the running.

I would never be able to prove a statement about "anger" until I have a premise about "anger". Since the premises of this argument never mentioned "anger", my answer choice is going to have to. So (A), (D), and (E) don't even warrant my attention.

Trying to diagram (B) vs. (C) is not going to be easy or particularly useful.

(B) essentially says:
Anger in response to useful info --> Unreasonable

That looks a lot like our conclusion:
Anger in response to insults --> Unreasonable

Can we fairly say from the premises that "insults" = "useful info"? Almost, but that's only in cases in which the insults are accurate. We could prove that "anger in response to accurate insults is unreasonable". But that's not our conclusion.

(C) says:
Pity or gratitude should be prompted --> Anger unreasonable

We could slightly re-word how we originally diagrammed the conclusion to make it look closer to this:
In response to insults --> Anger unreasonable

So now we're asking ourselves if the premises told us that "in response to insults" = "pity or gratitude should be prompted".

They did, since an insult will always either be true or false, and each of those cases should prompt either pity or gratitude.

It's hard to put that all together in one linear looking logic chain, but if we had to try:

True insult --> should evoke gratitude
+
False insult --> should evoke pity
=
insult --> should evoke gratitude or pity

+
should evoke gratitude or pity --> anger unreasonable
=
insult --> anger unreasonable

I would encourage you not to try to force every Sufficient Assumption question into a diagram, since it's often more trouble then it's worth. If you see a chain of conditional logic, you definitely could benefit from diagramming. If not, it's probably not going to make understanding the missing link any easier.

I would encourage you to always scan the conclusion for new, undefined terms. Sometimes it's a real easy way to eliminate a few answers (occasionally it gets you all the way to the correct answer ... for example, look at Q21 in this same section ... the new/undefined wording in the conclusion makes (E) the only contender).

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have questions.

Thanks for the explanation. I have 3 questions in regards to your post.
1) you mentioned a shortcut that can be used for Sufficient Assumption questions. I do see that the words "anger" and "unreasonable" are in the conclusion but not in the premises. You said we can eliminate A, D, and E right away because they don't contain the word "anger" but can we also eliminate them because they don't contain the word "unreasonable"?

2) Is this shortcut always accurate on Sufficient Assumption questions? I didn't read about this technique in Manhattan LR 4th edition but I did read about term-shift in these question types

3) Can answer B be used for Necessary Assumption questions since it is part of the argument? or is this answer just a premise booster?