- PowerScore Staff
- Posts: 651
- Joined: Oct 19, 2022
- Fri Oct 25, 2024 10:47 am
#110099
Hi albert,
You're right that the word "mainly" in the stimulus does allow for the idea that there may have been other factors that contributed to the changes in North American residential architecture, but the increased availability and affordability of air conditioning is stated to be the primary cause.
Generally, you'll weaken a partial-cause argument in the same five ways as a standard casual argument, except that you should be wary of answers that seem to be offering an alternate cause (which is generally a great way to weaken a normal causal argument). For an answer to really weaken this argument using an alternate cause, it would need to state or imply that the alternate cause may have been the primary cause, not just a contributing factor, because just identifying a possible contributing factor would be consistent with the conclusion and therefore not weaken the argument.
For example, many people felt that Answer E was offering an alternate cause for the design changes. Even if this were true, we don't know that this would have been the main cause; this could have been an additional cause even though the air conditioning was still the primary cause. (Also, as Adam mentioned in an earlier post, the thermal-insulating technology could have been an effect of designing thin walls rather than the cause. In other words, the architects may have decided to make the walls thin because of air conditioning, and then realized that they would need thermal-insulating to keep the heat in with the thin walls.)
The other four methods still work well even with partial-cause arguments, and Answer C, which shows the effect occurring without the cause, still weakens the claim that air conditioning was the primary cause of the design changes.
You're right that the word "mainly" in the stimulus does allow for the idea that there may have been other factors that contributed to the changes in North American residential architecture, but the increased availability and affordability of air conditioning is stated to be the primary cause.
Generally, you'll weaken a partial-cause argument in the same five ways as a standard casual argument, except that you should be wary of answers that seem to be offering an alternate cause (which is generally a great way to weaken a normal causal argument). For an answer to really weaken this argument using an alternate cause, it would need to state or imply that the alternate cause may have been the primary cause, not just a contributing factor, because just identifying a possible contributing factor would be consistent with the conclusion and therefore not weaken the argument.
For example, many people felt that Answer E was offering an alternate cause for the design changes. Even if this were true, we don't know that this would have been the main cause; this could have been an additional cause even though the air conditioning was still the primary cause. (Also, as Adam mentioned in an earlier post, the thermal-insulating technology could have been an effect of designing thin walls rather than the cause. In other words, the architects may have decided to make the walls thin because of air conditioning, and then realized that they would need thermal-insulating to keep the heat in with the thin walls.)
The other four methods still work well even with partial-cause arguments, and Answer C, which shows the effect occurring without the cause, still weakens the claim that air conditioning was the primary cause of the design changes.