#15 - Marketing consultant: Last year I predicted that LRG’s

[99bengardner@gmail.com]

• (B) it fails to consider that economic factors unrelated to the advertising campaign may have caused LRG’s low sales figures

• (A rephrase) it fails to consider that factors unrelated to the advertising campaign may have caused LRG’s sales to be lower still, absent the campaign

If we take "sales could be lower still absent the campaign", (A) in its original form, to be for our purposes equivalent to my new (A) "factors unrelated could have made sales lower still absent the campaign" I think we have (A) and (B) exactly equivalent, with the only change being "take for granted" to "fails to consider."

My question then is this: isn't the argument "failing to consider" a position the same as the argument (not the author!) "taking for granted" the position in not addressing it? Or alternatively are we meant to realize (A) says the argument is taken for granted, not the need to address the argument is taken for granted? Because the end result is still the same, we are left with an argument that is incomplete and criticizable on the grounds that "unrelated factors" are ignored in both (A) and (B).

[Dana D]

Hey 99ben,

Here I would read, "takes for granted" as "assumes", meaning answer choice (A) is really saying the flaw is "assuming that LRG's sales wouldn't have been lower still in the...". You can see how that's different than answer choice (B)'s "fails to consider" now - the author definitely doesn't assume that economic factors unrelated to the ad wasn't a cause.

This is like a cause and effect argument, with the cause = the ad campaign and the effect = the poor sales. But the author doesn't consider that there could be an alternative cause for the low sales - economic factors. Thus, that is a weakness in the argument.

hope that helps!