Q21 - Essayist: when the first prehistoric

[JovyT883]

I initially eliminated (C) because I thought "very few non-hunted animals became extinct" didn't necessarily mean microorganisms caused them to become extinct. There could be other reason like natural disasters, change of environment, etc.

However,, when I read the explanations above, it seemed that we should infer from the stimulus that the animals could become extinct only by either hunting or microorganism. May I know why? Thanks!!

[mswang7]

Premises: Migrators from asia to NA discovered many animals that would be extinct in 2000 years
Probably wasn't hunting
A lot of diseases were brought as a result of the migration
Concl: Diseases responsible for extinction
Prephrase: Something that discusses a third possible cause for extinction or instance of diseases without extinction, or instances of hunting & extinction

A. This is really not relevant despite their attempt to make you leap to less able to avoid predators - continued decrease in population
B. We're discussing the animal extinction, not human pop
C. The verbiage is purposefully confusing but basically saying not hunted-> not extinct, contrapositive is extinct -> could have been due to hunting
D. Diseases can not cause suffering & still cause extinction - out of scope
E. Doesn't do anything for our argument as we are discussing the extinctions in the first 2000 years.

[JeremyK460]

Breakdown:
The author explains an event by presenting factors that he believes are plausible to support his conclusion.

The first premise describes a situation/phenomenon (several animal species are extinct).

The second premise is heavy; two causal claims are made. The first is non-causal: ‘hunting in small bands couldn’t plausibly cause several/many animal extinctions’. The second is causal: ‘a migrated disease likely caused several/many animal extinctions’.

Analysis:
Two things I had to work through: the significance of ‘many’ and the significance of ‘implausible’.

The argument isn’t really about quantity as much as it’s about the strength of the rationale. Seeing this, I ignored the ‘quantity idea’ and focused on the strength of the rationale.

Perhaps it isn’t implausible that these emigrants, by hunting, caused the animal extinctions.
Perhaps it’s plausible that the non-hunted animals survived / were not extinct.
Perhaps it wasn’t a disease; the animals died of some factor that was overlooked.

Answer Choices:
(A) This feels like it would strengthen the idea that the disease played a key role in their extinction.

(B) This also in a weird way seems to strengthen the idea that humans carried it and possibly weren’t aware, spreading it amongst possibly animals.

(C) Few not-hunted animals are extinct. Most not-hunted animals are not-extinct. Most not-hunted animals are alive. Most of the animals that weren’t hunted are still alive. This would shift the burden of proof onto the author, seeing that most of the animals that weren’t killed by hunting weren’t killed by the disease either; the author needs to explain why this is the case in defense of his claim that the disease played a crucial factor in several species’ extinctions.

(D) This answer tells me that humans and animals are capable of being asymptomatic carriers. This answer doesn’t tell me if it’s possible that the disease can be spread to these particular animals.

(E) The argument seems to be about animals that went extinct 2,000 year after arrival. This answer choice is about animals that went extinct more than 2,000 years after arrival. The temporality of the category is off.

Questioning Premises:
Here’s my take on ‘premises can’t be called into question’. I can’t refute the point of the premise, but I can refute how it got there (its reasoning). As another poster stated, if we call their belief into question, we're not questioning the premise; instead, we're questioning the basis for their belief. For instance, if I give my friend my address, they can’t tell me that I don’t live there (barring that I didn’t accidentally give them the wrong address), but they can for sure tell me that the route I take to get there sucks. I hope that was a pretty good analogy! A causal premise, like the argument expresses, is a good example of a premise that I can question. Perhaps the posited cause is insignificant, or there’s an ancestral/common cause, etc.

Plausible / Possible:
Also, like another poster said, implausible doesn’t mean impossible. Plausibility refers to concepts of judgment and conviction to argumentation; the process of convincing someone. Depending on the context, something that is considered possible can be conceivable, doable, realizable, acceptable, believable, permitted, eventual, likely, etc. For my fellow NBA fans, here’s an example:

It’s plausible that LeBron is better than Jordan.
It’s possible that LeBron is better than Jordan.

Maybe it’s just me but my brain reacts to each of these statements differently. Without much context, the first statement prompts me to think ‘what’s the reason for this’, and the second statement prompts me to think ‘true’. The connotative language of ‘plausible’ suggests that there’s evidence and reason provided for the claim while the connotative language of ‘possible’ suggests that there’s acceptability and believability of the claim itself. It’s true that LeBron is possibly better than Jordan. I accept it. It’s true that LeBron is plausibly better than Jordan provided that there's some good reason why! I hope that analogy is good, too!

[VanessaG743]

Could someone please help me figure out what I am missing in understanding C?

Like others in this thread, I tried to use an example to illustrate it. So if there were 10 animals that were not hunted, and very few of them became extinct 2,000 years after the first migrations --> most in this group are not extinct and are therefore alive.

So we know most animals that were not hunted survived after 2,000 years. And the argument implies that there was a group of animals that were hunted by the new arrivals. But how does that help us argue that microorganisms were not necessarily the crucial factor that accounts for the extinctions?

[Misti Duvall]

Could someone please help me figure out what I am missing in understanding C?

Like others in this thread, I tried to use an example to illustrate it. So if there were 10 animals that were not hunted, and very few of them became extinct 2,000 years after the first migrations --> most in this group are not extinct and are therefore alive.

So we know most animals that were not hunted survived after 2,000 years. And the argument implies that there was a group of animals that were hunted by the new arrivals. But how does that help us argue that microorganisms were not necessarily the crucial factor that accounts for the extinctions?

With causal argument like this, it can help to step back and note the causal link. Here, the argument is assuming that imported microorganisms caused the extinctions. (C) weakens that link by pointing to animals we would have expected to go extinct if the cause were microorganisms, but did not. If microorganisms were the cause of the extinctions, we'd expect both hunted and non-hunted animals to have caught diseases and gone extinct. But if mostly hunted animals went extinct, that weakens the idea that microorganisms were the cause.

Hope this helps.