Answer Indicators
Started by
mstabilej
· started 2024-10-17 16:29
· last activity 2024-10-21 13:54
· 1 reply
In the video on flawed parallel reasoning questions, we were told to make sure that the conclusion in the stimulus matched the conclusion in the answer choice with respect to quantifiers among other things like absolute statement/or not, etc.
In the stimulus we see quantifiers such as "everyone" and "none." The correct answer, however, has "all" and "everyone", but it DOESN'T have "none". So I had eliminated that answer choice right away as I thought the video had instructed me to do. Is it not the case that for flawed parallel reasoning questions, answer choice quantifiers DON'T have to match those in the stimulus?
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Emil-Kunkin
· 2024-10-21 13:54
I think that the matching sufficient and necessary and quantifiers is a good starting point but it's not the be all and the end all of parallel reasoning, and especially of parallel flaw questions. I think there are two main reasons for this.
First, it's possible to express the same idea with somewhat different quantifiers. To say that "few people think X" and that "most people do not think X" mean the same thing, even though they use different quantifiers.
More importantly, the quantifier or conditional language could actually be ancillary to the argument. This is much more the case for flawed parallel reasoning, but that's what we see here. The argument is bad because it assumes that what is true of one small group is true of the entire population. I think that looking for the same flaw is much more useful than looking for the same quantifiers.
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