- Fri May 30, 2014 6:29 pm
#14877
Hi Jkjones!
This can be a tricky one. The flaw here could be considered General Lack of Support for the Conclusion, one of the Evidence Flaws. But that category can be a bit of a catchall so let's make sure we understand why exactly the evidence doesn't support the conclusion.
Premise: K's original painting of R not an accurate portrait
Conclusion: Your reproduction of K's painting will not be an accurate reproduction
Whether or not K actually painted a good likeness of R, has nothing to do with whether or not "You" (whoever that is) can paint an accurate reproduction. They are completely unrelated.
To illustrate, let's use a completely ridiculous example. Let's say I decide to paint a portrait of Ryan Gosling. I happen to be a terrible artist so I'm guessing that, assuming my portrait of Ryan comes out resembling a human at all, it will most likely look like some sort of deranged Russell Crowe. Now that's a pretty inaccurate portrait. But let's say I bring Rembrandt back to life and I say, hey Rembrandt, why don't you reproduce my awful portrait of Ryan Gosling. Rembrandt is a pretty fantastic painter so I'm guessing that Zombie Rembrandt is going to be able to replicate my portrait 100% accurately. Which still means that it will look like deranged Russell Crowe. Because that's what my portrait looks like.
The point is, how accurate or inaccurate my original portrait is has nothing to do with how accurate or inaccurate a reproduction of my portrait is. When we're talking about how accurate the reproduction is, we're talking about how accurately it resembles the original portrait, not how accurately it resembles the actual person.
You can apply the Test of Abstraction to help you find an answer choice that will match this flaw. If I were to put this argument in abstract terms, I would say: "The original was inaccurate, so the reproduction of the original will be inaccurate."
Now that we understand the flaw in the stimulus better and we're armed with the Test of Abstraction, let's see how answer choice (A) matches this flaw. Answer choice (A) says that George's speech had half-truths and misquotes (essentially, that it was inaccurate) and that, therefore, a tape recording of it will not have good sound quality (in other words, will be inaccurate). That matches our abstraction: the original speech was inaccurate so therefore the reproduction of the speech will be inaccurate.
We can also see that this is the same type of flaw we have in the stimulus because how accurate George's speech is has nothing to do with what kind of sound quality the recording will have.
Answer choice (D) doesn't match our abstraction as well. The conclusion is somewhat similar. Jo's imitation of Layne won't be very good is similar to your reproduction of the painting won't be very good. But the premise is off. The premise in (D) is that Jo is different than Layne which isn't similar to saying that the original painting wasn't accurate. The premise in (D) gives us a reason why Jo might not have the ability to do an accurate imitation of Layne. It's not a great argument, but at least the premise is a little more connected to the conclusion than we have in our stimulus argument.
Remember that even if you can't determine what the flaw is, you can still find the answer in Parallel Flaw questions by relying on the same strategies you use with regular Parallel Reasoning questions. Make sure the conclusions and premises match and use the Test of Abstraction to help yourself find the correct answer.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Kelsey
