Q1 - Jim's teacher asked him to

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (looks like Flaw, but all answers are prefaced by "fails to consider")

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The substance contains iron.
Evidence: The substance was attracted to a magnet, and stuff with iron in it is attracted to magnets.

Answer Anticipation:
This is the classic Conditional Logic Flaw, although many people will get through this question without thinking of it in those technical terms. Jim knows that "if it has iron, it will be attracted to a magnet". It is attracted to a magnet, so Jim concludes (through an illegal reversal) that the substance does have iron. He concludes that a condition that ensures attraction to a magnet is thereby required for attraction to a magnet. Or, more conversationally, he fails to consider that the substance is just some OTHER attractive metal. To weaken Jim's reasoning, we need to counterague that the substance "does NOT contain iron", and somehow explain to him why that substance was still attracted to a magnet.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Not relevant. This substance WAS attracted to a magnet.

(B) Not relevant. This substance was attracted to A MAGNET.

(C) Who cares if it took some fidgeting with the magnet to make it attract?

(D) Yes! "Jim, the substance does NOT contain iron. It just contains some OTHER ingredient that magnets also attract."

(E) Irrelevant HOW STRONGLY it was attracted.

Takeaway/Pattern: When you need to weaken an author who committed the Conditional Logic flaw, you need to think about the mistaken connection the author made. In Jim's case, it was thinking "if it was attracted to magnet, it had to be iron." To weaken a mistaken conditional idea, you need an example of something that IS the sufficient (left side) idea, but ISN'T the necessary (right side). We need something that "IS attracted to magnets, but ISN'T iron".

#officialexplanation

[tzyc]

Just wanted to double check...
(A) is wrong because it contradicts one of the premises right?

Thanks!

[tommywallach]

Hey Strawberry,

I wouldn't quite say that. It doesn't really contradict the premise. If I say that objects are warmed by the sun, that's a fair statement, even if sometimes that doesn't happen (because something is in the way, maybe).

The problem is that Jim doesn't need to consider the situations in which iron isn't attracted to magnets, because in his research, the iron was attracted to the magnet. So the thing that he's missing is other things that might cause the attraction, not things that might be at stake when attraction doesn't occur.

Hope that makes sense!

-t

[krisk743]

Hey guys, this questions always seem to confuse me although it's a pretty standard reversal.


I've read this question numerous times and have them in all my notes but I always seem to make the same two mistakes: I read "did contain iron" as "did not contain iron" for some reason (even untimed)....and diagram Magnets ------> attract Iron.


I get that it's Iron ------> Magnet because it's causal but can't seem to figure out why it is considered causal. Because of the word attract? Because it physically attracts it's considered causal?
I have a hard time figuring out why some things are causal and need to correct it. Please help!!

Thanks