Q16 - Because addictive drugs are physically harmful (weaken

[WaltGrace1983]

I got this question wrong and I am going to explain why. Anyone care to tell me if I am on the right track? I struggled between (A) and (E) and picked the wrong one, (A). This is a weaken question.

Almost everything in sports is unnatural
(→)
It is ridiculous to prohibit nonaddictive drugs for this reason
+
We should be attending to more serious problems, those that result in unnecessary deaths and injuries
→
The use of nonaddictive drugs by athletes shouldn't be prohibited

First of all, this core is messy. It is incredibly hard to follow the support, though the conclusion is quite clear. I think this is what tripped me up. I completely undervalued the sentence "Because addictive drugs are physically harmful, their use by athletes is never justified." In other words, the stimulus outright says (Physically harmful → ~Justified) and then goes on from there. However, this statement doesn't really seem relevant to the core? Can anyone help me out with deciphering the role of this statement?

Because this stem is asking us to weaken the conclusion, the premises may not be as relevant to the correct answer as it often is. It seems hard to weaken the conclusion by simply stating something along the lines of the naturalness/unnaturalness of the non-addictive drugs anyway. However, we might be able to weaken the conclusion by saying that the use of aspirins and other non-addictive drugs do result in unnecessary deaths and injuries. After all, the author is clearly telling us that those unnecessary deaths and injuries are what we should focus on - maybe there is a connection between non-addictive drugs and unnecessary deaths and injuries? Either way, I am a little bit unsure of how to attack this one so I'll just go through the answers with an open mind and the acknowledgement of these few jumps in the stimulus.

(A) This seems really good. I'll keep it. If big doses of these non-addictive drugs can enhance athletic performance, maybe they should be prohibited.

(B) We don't need to weaken the claim against addictive drugs. We need to show why non-addictive drugs should not necessarily be prohibited. We already know that the author doesn't care about how unnatural something is anyway ("This is ridiculous; almost everything in sports in unnatural") so appealing to the unnaturalness of the drugs doesn't do much.

(C) We only care about sports and this has nothing to do with drugs!

(D) We don't need to refute anything about running shoes, boxing gloves, and machines! The author is already for them and so there is no debate here!

(E) I eliminated this one initially because I simply didn't realize how the first sentence impacted the stimulus. Because I didn't think the first sentence was a part of the core, it went out of mind. However, I also eliminated (E) during a blind review of this question because of the phrase "can be." I thought to myself, "well just because some CAN BE physically harmful, doesn't necessarily mean it is." I just thought that this answer choice was too weak. If it were stronger, I would definitely have no problem picking this answer.

So what is the deal with this question? Am I right in my assumptions about where I went wrong? I feel like (A) is a good answer because it gives a reason why nonaddictive drugs should be prohibited. However, it also seems that we could make the case that the running shoes, machines, etc. talked about in the stimulus may also impact performance and these things aren't prohibited of course. "Athletic performance" also seems like it could be a bit out of scope because we never talked about it and we don't know what impact it has on the argument yet I think I am only believing that to be true because I already know the right answer .

Can someone help me with this?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Nice work in starting to unravel a crazy difficult stimulus, WaltGrace1983.

I'm actually going to lay this out in two separate ways because of how complex it is. First, I'll lay out the complete argument, as I distill it. Then, I'll walk through a quick and dirty 'real time thought process' that avoids at least some of the mess.

This stimulus has a primary argument, a subsidiary argument within that, and an introductory argument. Yes, that's right, there are three identifiable cores here. The introductory argument sets the stage of the argument, but it also provides us with some relevant information about what could potentially justify a ban.

INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT

PREMISE: Addictive drugs = physically harmful
CONCLUSION: addictive drugs = never justified
ASSUMPTION: physically harmful = never justified

SUBSIDIARY ARGUMENT

PREMISE: Tons of things are unnatural and not prohibited
CONCLUSION: The argument that nonaddictive drugs should be prohibited because they are unnatural is ridiculous.

PRIMARY ARGUMENT

PREMISE (from subsidiary argument): The fact that nonaddictive (aspirin/vitamins) are 'unnatural' is not a good reason to prohibit them
PREMISE: We should be focused on more serious problems that result in unnecessary death and injuries
CONCLUSION: Nonaddictive drugs should not be prohibited.

Now, let's talk practicality. On test day, none of us are likely to break the stimulus out in quite this much detail. It's a fascinating stimulus because of the layers (like an onion! or Shrek!), but how would we handle this in real time?

Well, the final conclusion of the primary argument is, as you note, fortunately not too hard to locate. And to weaken the conclusion that nonaddictive drugs should not be prohibited, I need to make it more likely that in fact these nonaddictive drugs should be prohibited. Scanning through the information we have from the premises *and* from the author's introductory argument, the only things that we know have a chance to justify a ban would be 1) physical harm and 2) unnecessary death and injury. In real time, I'd note these both and figure I'll nitpick between them later if I have to.

Without one of those two ideas, how could we possibly make it more likely that prohibition is a good idea? We'd have to be justifying it with some outside bias about what could make it a good idea to ban things.

There's a strong reflection of language between (E) and the introductory argument. If these nonaddictive drugs are physically harmful, then the use is never justified. And even if we had not noticed this language reflection, if they are physically harmful, that sounds like it's at least in the same ballpark as the "injuries" that characterize the "more serious problems" that we should be focused on.

The different here between "can be" and "are" is not quite as significant as you're making it. Both statements in this argument are essentially stating a generally relevant characteristic. "Addictive drugs are physically harmful" may not mean 'every single time', but rather that they are harmful as a general matter. That aspirin/vitamins "can be physically harmful" is hedged a bit, but not so significantly as to make me discount it. The statement is indicating not just mere vague possibility, but the distinct and specific potential for physical harm. Since things that are physically harmful are never justified, the more likelihood something is physically harmful, the more likely that something is unjustified, and therefore the more likely it is that prohibition is a good idea.

The biggest problem with (A) is that we've never established that [enhancing performance] is a valid reason to prohibit something. In real life, we might feel strongly that that's enough of a reason. But that's an outside bias that cannot be relied upon in this question. From a strictly logical perspective, this answer is as relevant as one that said that massive doses of vitamins turned one's hair white. Without some connection between the characteristic of the vitamins (enhancing performance or whitening hair) and the concept of justification for prohibition, it just doesn't matter.

Your eliminations for (B), (C), and (D) are solid!

Let me know what you think of the core breakdown, and the reasons for eliminating (A). This stimulus is crazy dense!

[WaltGrace1983]

As always, a very helpful post, Christine.

Coming back to this question with fresh eyes, I am a bit confused why I picked (A) . This, as you mentioned, would require another assumption: that enhancing athletic performance is a reason for a ban. (E) makes total sense!

Thanks a lot!

[smsotolongo]

B,C,D seemed pretty easy to elimate here. It also came down to A and E for me too. A was very tempting and I thought about it because enhancing athletic performance is a problem. However, do we know if it's a serious problem that plagues the sport? No, we don't. Since one of the premises says that we need to attend to far more serious problems plaguing the sport that result in deaths and injuries I went with E. I associated something that is physically harmful with injuries.