Q22 - If the magazine's

[samuel.harris.10]

Hi, just having trouble distinguishing between (D) and (E). (E) makes sense on review. If other users have any advice about eliminating (D) I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

[kjsmit02]

(D) "takes a single fact that is incompatible with a general claim as enough to show that claim to be false" is wrong, because for one, nothing the author says is truly "incompatible" with the passage as a whole. All of the statements are focused on the same topic and attempt to support each other. His facts simply break up his conditional reasoning, but they are compatible with each other. Furthermore, no facts are proving any claims false. He simply builds a conditional chain, uses a fact to remove a part of the chain, and then claims that the chain can't happen because of the removal. The author isn't debating what's false or true, but rather what can and cannot occur.

The error lies in (E) , as the author takes something that is sufficient and treats it as if it were necessary. The magazine's ["circulation rising like it has over 10 yrs] is sufficient for it to ["be the largest selling magazine"], but not necessary; many other factors could make it the largest selling magazine (ex. all of their competitors stop publishing, circulation rises to a lesser but still sufficient degree, ect.). For these reasons, E is correct

[ohthatpatrick]

Great response!

I’ll put up a complete explanation since we don’t have one yet for this problem.

Question Type: Flaw

Argument Core:

Conclusion
The magazine won’t be #1 martial arts ten years from now

why?

Evidence
If circulation continued rising —> #1 martial arts ten years from now
but
publisher won’t let editor make proposed changes
and
without changes —> circulation will not continue rising.

analysis of Core
IF we’re doing Flaw, pun intended, and we see Conditional wording, more often than not we are just being tested on Conditional Logic.

That’s a really helpful thing to memorize, since most Flaw questions are NOT about conditional logic, but almost all Flaw questions that CONTAIN conditional logic ARE about conditional logic.

So seeing “if” should make us carefully analyze (if not symbolize) the conditional logic.

We were given a rule that says
“IF circulation keeps rising, THEN #1 magazine”

The author is reasoning this way
“Since circulation NOT keep rising, NOT #1 magazine.”

We know that, given A -> B, we’re NOT allowed to infer that ~A -> ~B.

The name of the Famous Flaw that describes “messing up conditional logic” is the Necessary / Sufficient flaw. So as we go to answer choices, we could certainly scan for such wording. However, as the previous poster demonstrated, we also want to be flexible with other ways you can describe the author’s poor thinking:
“takes for granted that a failure to maintain rising circulation would prevent the magazine from being #1”
or
“fails to consider that the magazine will become #1 by [some other reason]”


Answer choices

(A) The first half is true, but the author concludes “the magazine won’t be #1”, not “no other changes are needed”.

(B) Our author didn’t do this. In the first sentence he’s talking about “the rate at which circulation has been / will be increasing” and in the 2nd sentence he is still talking about “the rate at which circulation has been / will be increasing”.

(C) This is a Famous Flaw (and a garbage answer 99% of the time you see it). This was not a Circular Argument. The conclusion is “we won’t be the #1 magazine”. Never in the premise did he say “we won’t be the #1 magazine”.

(D) This describes an argument like, “Some people say that watermelons are generally sweet. But this watermelon isn’t sweet. So those people are clearly wrong.” There is a certain feel that our author showed something to be false, because he starts out by describing a scenario in which the magazine WOULD be #1 and then ultimately concludes that it WON’T be #1. But, according to this answer choice, the author would be saying that the general claim in the 1st sentence is false. That’s certainly not true. Our author is USING that conditional (improperly) to derive his conclusion, so he’s not rejecting the truth of the first sentence.

An important thing to remember is that you can’t just cut off the 2nd half of the 1st sentence and say that THAT is a claim. A conditional statement has to be taken altogether. He is saying “IF A happens, we know that B will happen.” That doesn’t mean he thinks B will or will not happen. He’s only staking a claim to the connection between A and B. And he never provides a specific fact that says, “Nevermind, there IS no connection between A and B.”

(E) This is what we would find if we scanned for Necessary / Sufficient.
“ensure” is a synonym for Sufficient
“required” is a synonym for Necessary

“rising circulation” would ensure #1 magazine, according to the first sentence.

But the author is acting like
WITHOUT rising circulation, we CAN’T be #1 magazine.

Hope this helps.