Q9 - If a person chooses to walk

[zhanga]

Can someone help break down the answer choices for me please? I don't understand why E is the correct answer.

[timmydoeslsat]

No problem.

This is a straight to the point argument. The core can be viewed like this:

[If person decides to walk than drive ---> 1 less vehicle emitting pollution than there would have been.]

THEREFORE----->

[If people would walk when feasible ---> then pollution would be greatly reduced.]

An assumption question tests to see if you can spot the gaps in the reasoning. The way I approach it is to say, "Do the premises guarantee or entail this conclusion?"

This argument takes a nice little side step you might not see. I will go through the answer choices as I see read them, that way you can develop the internal critic that lives within you!

My first thought upon reading this argument was the shift in the language in the conclusion with the phrase "greatly" reduced. They must be assuming that there is a lot of this driving stuff going on while walking is feasible.

A) Is it necessary for their to be a variety of ways to cut down on pollution? Nope! We only need one for this argument to be valid.

B) Is tempting. But you must stand up to it. Negate this statement and juxtapose it to the conclusion.

Negated (B): "Taking public transportation rather than driving is always feasible."

Conclusion: "If people would walk when feasible ---> then pollution would be greatly reduced."

The argument's conclusion is saying IF PEOPLE WOULD WALK! We could say that riding a bicycle, skateboard, etc is always feasible, but it has no impact on our conditional conclusion. Even if it is always feasible to ride a bike or to take public transportation, that does not destroy the argument of if people would walk. A negated answer choice on a necessary assumption question will destroy the conclusion as it cannot live without it.

C) Is it necessary for walking to be the only feasible alternative? See explanation for (B). Same concept.

D) It is not necessary for us to have these people. And what warrior people these must be! These herculean people never drive but often walk! We do not need that.

E) Here we are. People sometimes drive when it is feasible to walk instead.

Negated: People NEVER drive when it is feasible to walk instead.

If the negated answer choice were true, it would destroy the argument. It is assuming that people are not currently doing what they are advocating, which is to walk rather than drive.

[mcrittell]

Not really I understand the CR, much less how the negation works in this one:

"Negated: People NEVER drive when it is feasible to walk instead."

and

"which is to walk rather than drive."

How do these relate?

[anjelica.grace]

Not really I understand the CR, much less how the negation works in this one:

"Negated: People NEVER drive when it is feasible to walk instead."

and

"which is to walk rather than drive."

How do these relate?

Although this was posted a while ago, I'd like to try and answer this anyway.

The reason that (E) is correct is because the negation of this answer choice destroys the argument. How so?

Well, (E) negated tells us that people never drive when they can walk, that is, that everybody is already walking whenever they can, in which case, we would not expect a great reduction in pollution when people walk because that's what they are already doing.

I came up with a parallel example on a smaller scale that hopefully illuminates the issue. If John cooked whenever possible, he would save a lot more money since, if he cooked instead of buying takeout, that's one less expense.

The necessary assumption in my example is that John sometimes buys takeout when he could cook instead. Otherwise, if he's never buying takeout anyway, then we can hardly expect any significant savings for John since he's already on the right track.

I hope this makes sense!

[SJK493]

I was wondering what kind of approach you would take for this question. I used the process of elimination to answer this question because I couldn’t find an effective prephrase, but after re-doing the question, I thought that the part where it says ‘whenever it is feasible for them to do so’ in the conclusion could be taken to prephrase the answer–that it actually might not be feasible.

Would this be an acceptable approach to questions that have the ‘if-then’ hypothetical as the conclusion? Or what approach is generally recommended for questions with a conditional statement as the conclusion?