Q14 - Kim: In northern Europe during

[vredd418]

Why is A correct?

I had narrowed it down to A and B, but chose B. I thought Kim's defense against Lee would require him to show that people of the time were aware of their enhanced life expectancy. B addresses this idea, but is it wrong because it states "Present-day psychologists have noted that people's attitude toward life CAN change in response to information about their life expectancy.", implying that just because such info can change attitudes doesn't necessarily mean the people of the time were aware of their increased life expectancy?

Is A correct because it shows awareness of life expectancy is not the cause of changing attitudes?

[extraordinary.kye]

Lee makes strong case that the increase in life expectancy couldn't make people happier directly, since they didn't know about it, but perhaps it had some other effect??

Answer Choice (A) tells us if true, would provide other effect scenario. If longer lives in and of themselves caused economic changes, and those changes had a beneficial impact on northern Europeans, then the increase in life expectancy could have had positive impact on the poeple's worldview, even if they didn't know they were going to live longer.


Answer choice (B) is irrelevant, because Lee points out, it is extremely unlikely that the northern Europeans had that information at the time

Hope this helps

[hailyduong]

Why is D incorrect?

I chose D because i thought if they did not know about the life expectancy theories then that would counter Lee's claim that people need to be aware of the life expectancy increased in order for there to be a change in attitude.

Is D incorrect because of "statistical theories"? Although the people did not know about the statistical theories, they might have some OTHER theory about life expectancy at the time?

[ohthatpatrick]

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

Question Type: Weaken Lee or Strengthen Kim

I lean towards thinking of this as Weaken, since we’re trying to defend Kim against Lee’s criticism. So we really need to attack Lee’s reasoning and weaken its force.

Lee’s conclusion:
Stuff wasn’t changing in 18th century Europe because of a change in life expectancy
(why?)
Lee’s premise:
Because that stuff wouldn’t change unless people were AWARE their life expectancy had increased.

What are some assumptions or possible objections we might make to Lee’s argument?

1. Lee, you’re assuming that people were NOT aware. Maybe they were.

2. Why should I accept that people needed to be aware that their life expectancy had changed? If it HAD changed, then it’s plausible that the CHANGE could result in NEW effects, whether people are aware of the change or not.

(for example, do we need to be AWARE of global warming in order to start behaving differently as a result of it? Go ask a polar bear.)

(A) This seems to go in the direction of #2. Maybe people didn’t know their life expectancy was changing, but the fact that it WAS changing manifested itself in other changes that DIRECTLY INFLUENCED people’s attitudes.

(B) This seems to reinforce Lee’s idea that people change once they KNOW their life expectancy has changed. To help Kim, we either need to show that people in 18th century Europe DID know about their changing life expectancy or that even if they didn’t know they were still affected by it. This answer choice doesn’t accomplish either of those goals.

(C) This doesn’t touch on Lee’s ideas at all. It says nothing about ‘life expectancy’.

(D) This strengthens Lee’s argument. This is the opposite of what we want. Lee assumes that people did NOT know that their life expectancy had changed. According to (D), Lee is correct. The concept hadn’t even been invented yet, so they couldn’t have known, using that terminlogy, that their life expectancy had changed.

(E) This sort of strengthens Lee’s argument. Lee thinks that “life expectancy” (a demographic phenomena) is NOT a good explanation for the change in attitudes. (E) agrees that something else is more likely the cause of changing attitudes.

Hope this helps.

[keonheecho]

Hello,
This one is confusing to me, because aren't we not supposed to question premises of arguments? Why is it acceptable to do so in this case?

[tommywallach]

You can question premises when they aren't definitive. Few questions do it, but it is allowed, and happens reasonably often.

-t