Q12 - The school principal insisted that

[rdown2b]

Can some one help me. I thought A looked pretty good.

[timmydoeslsat]

This is a parallel the flaw question.

We want to identify the flaw in the stimulus and hunt for this flaw in one of our answer choices.

The core of this argument can be seen as this:

The school principal said that bad teaching caused student failures.

+

Then, in a short period of time, the failures stopped!

-----> THEREFORE...

Teaching improved at the school.


Do those two premises necessarily entail the truth of the conclusion? No! Here is why.

The failures stopping in a short period of time is simply a correlation. We have no direct evidence of causation in this case. Yet, the principal chooses one!

There can be alternative causes that produce that same effect. Perhaps a change in the lunch menu or maybe all the kids were given laptops. Or maybe the teachers just fudged the numbers and passed everybody with a pulse! Does that mean that teaching improved? No!

Answer choices:

A) This answer choice does not mirror the flaw.
This one goes like this:

A causes B.

They stopped the action of A.

They saw the effect of not B.

I don't really believe this is a flaw. More of a who cares? The nutritionist concludes that they stopped gaining weight, but the nutritionist is not implicating a particular cause as to why the weight was lost.

It could be possible that it was the absence of causal factor (A), but perhaps all of the team members were taking a medicine that caused them to gain weight and they happened to stop that medication during the same time they stopped overeating.

B) This one can be dismissed with one detail read. Manager concludes working environment improved? Detail creep of going from filing complaints...complaints stopping...work environment improved? SHIFT of WORDS! Eliminate.

C) The nutritionist in this problem, just as in A, does not implicate a cause of the result. They are just reporting the results. This does not mirror the flaw in the stimulus where the principal does more than just report a result, he implicates a cause from a correlation.

D) Right answer!

Mangers posits that workers that filed complaints do not have enough to do.

- Short period of time...complaints stop.

- Manager concludes that they are now productively filling time.

Can you really conclude that the workers are now PRODUCTIVELY filling time? Maybe the workers eventually just gave up with complaints. They still check their facebook at work 5 hours a day, but they gave up on the complaints.

That is one alternative cause of the effect of no more complaints filed.

E) Same issue as A and C. The nutritionist is not implicating cause. Just reporting results.

[kopoku.08]

I got this right but i don't see how the flaw. it seems like the first statement is the original premise and the last two two statements are the contrapositive. Answer D appeared to be the same thing which is why i chose it.

[timmydoeslsat]

I got this right but i don't see how the flaw. it seems like the first statement is the original premise and the last two two statements are the contrapositive. Answer D appeared to be the same thing which is why i chose it.

There is a difference between using a contrapositive in conditional reasoning and attempting to prove cause.

If A then B.

We know that:

~B ---> ~A via the contrapositive


This stimulus states that the principal believes A is causing B.

When the effect of B stopped, he concluded that A was gone.

However, this does not prove his initial causal claim. We do not know that A was really causing B, it was just his opinion.

[disguise_sky]

Hi guys. I have a problem with this question.
In the stimulus, the school principal insisted that there was a casual relationship between teaching and students' failure.
But in (D), "the manager insisted that the workers who filed complaints did not have enough to do". It seems that the manager didn't think there was a casual relationship. In fact, when I was doing the test, I interpreted his words as a conditional relaionship, namely "file complaint --> not enough to do".
Thus, I think (D) does not parallel the stimulus so perfectly. Am I right?
Thanks in advance.

[WaltGrace1983]

Hi guys. I have a problem with this question.
In the stimulus, the school principal insisted that there was a casual relationship between teaching and students' failure.
But in (D), "the manager insisted that the workers who filed complaints did not have enough to do". It seems that the manager didn't think there was a casual relationship. In fact, when I was doing the test, I interpreted his words as a conditional relaionship, namely "file complaint --> not enough to do".
Thus, I think (D) does not parallel the stimulus so perfectly. Am I right?
Thanks in advance.

My thoughts exactly. Does anyone have an answer to this?

[rinagoldfield]

Great discussion, all!

Approach “match the flawed reasoning” questions by boiling down the original argument, putting the flaw in your own words, and using a process of elimination to knock of wrong answers.

Here we have a case of circular reasoning:

Superintendent says T causes F
F changes
…
Superintendent concludes that T must have changed, too.


The superintendent concludes that no change in F could have happened without a change in T. Put another way, he circles back to his premise that T leads to F. The right answer choice will also circle back to the original premise.

(A) does not match. This choice states that O cause WG, and then O changes. But in the original argument, the second thing (the “effect”) changes. O is the cause, not the effect. Out.

(B) contains a term shift.

(C) has no causal argument whatsoever.

(E) is similar to (A). It describes a change in the cause, not the effect.

(D) is correct. This one is tricky! You guys are right that the premise does not explicitly describe a causal argument. However, the same logical error is committed. An effect* changes (the complaints go away), and the author assumes that the thing leading to that effect must’ve changed, too.

These “match the flawed reasoning” questions are hard because often the right answer is not a perfect match. Remember to look for spirit matches, not identical matches.

*Does it make sense to say that workers did not have enough to do BECAUSE they filed complaints? No, it does not. Rather, the manager is essentially saying that “these lazy workers have so much time on their hands, so they complain.” In other words, time causes complaints.

[mzm13]

Can I ask a question about how can I present cause and effect in conditional logic way? who --> who ?

[DavidH327]

Great discussion, all!

Approach “match the flawed reasoning” questions by boiling down the original argument, putting the flaw in your own words, and using a process of elimination to knock of wrong answers.

Here we have a case of circular reasoning:

Superintendent says T causes F
F changes
…
Superintendent concludes that T must have changed, too.


The superintendent concludes that no change in F could have happened without a change in T. Put another way, he circles back to his premise that T leads to F. The right answer choice will also circle back to the original premise.

(A) does not match. This choice states that O cause WG, and then O changes. But in the original argument, the second thing (the “effect”) changes. O is the cause, not the effect. Out.

(B) contains a term shift.

(C) has no causal argument whatsoever.

(E) is similar to (A). It describes a change in the cause, not the effect.

(D) is correct. This one is tricky! You guys are right that the premise does not explicitly describe a causal argument. However, the same logical error is committed. An effect* changes (the complaints go away), and the author assumes that the thing leading to that effect must’ve changed, too.

These “match the flawed reasoning” questions are hard because often the right answer is not a perfect match. Remember to look for spirit matches, not identical matches.

*Does it make sense to say that workers did not have enough to do BECAUSE they filed complaints? No, it does not. Rather, the manager is essentially saying that “these lazy workers have so much time on their hands, so they complain.” In other words, time causes complaints.

For D, "not have enough to do" is a cause of "file complaints"?
and effect (file complaints) is negated in the second premise leading to the conclusion that cause (not have enough to do) must have changed??
I was thinking of the opposite file complaints --> not have enough to do and I thought the premise was negating cause leading to negating effect...
Could you please explain how would "workers who filed complaints did not have enough to do" implies a causality??

Thank you.

[ohthatpatrick]

We would have to use common sense to interpret the causality in (D), as well as some of these other answers, such as (B) and (C).

in (B), common sense would say
"having too many tasks" caused them to "file a complaint"

in (C),
"imagining they had gained weight" caused them to "insist they had gained weight"

in (D),
"not having enough to do" caused them to "file a complaint"

In (D), the employees are complaining about the opposite of (B).
(B): This job sucks. We have too much to do.
(D): This job sucks. We have too little to do.


Is there any common sense causal logic to the idea that
"filing a complaint" causes you to "not have enough to do"?

It's surprising and annoying that the correct answer doesn't use explicit causal language, but we're looking for the best available, and the two that DO use explicit causal language (A and E) have the same structural problem:
P1: Someone concludes that X is the reason for Y.
P2: X stops.
Conc: Someone concludes that Y has stopped.

We're trying to match an argument that had this structure:
P1: Someone concludes that X is the reason for Y.
P2: Y stops.
Conc: Someone concludes that X has stopped.

So we have to "force" causality on B, C, and D in order to figure out whether it could match the structure of the original.