#20 - Many important types of medicine have been developed

[AthenaDalton]

Hi Dlareh,

In answer choice (E), it is fair to read "should be preserved" as "ought to be preserved." However, this is still the author's opinion, and not a factual statement.

With regards to answer choice (A), the stimulus tells us that many important types of medicine have been developed from substances discovered in tropical plants. It's not necessarily the case that the scientists need to harvest large quantities of the plants themselves to produce the drugs, but rather that discovering a new chemical structure from a plant provides a useful starting point for new research. Therefore, if tropical forests are wiped out, there may be useful plants that go undiscovered by scientists.

I hope that makes sense. Good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[lathlee]

Is this Q can be solve using Nested Conditional Reasoning? Cuz I see a nature of Nested Conditional in the question Stem.

[Adam Tyson]

I'm not seeing anything in this stimulus that suggests a nested conditional, lathlee, as there is only one true conditional claim - if the forests are not preserved, then the medicines will not be developed. The rest of the claims are not conditional because they are not absolute - "many" and "very likely" are not conditional indicators. The stem gives no indication of anything conditional - it's just a plain assumption stem. You could use the conditional claim and its contrapositive to prephrase an assumption though: "if important medicines are developed, then we must have preserved the rain forests." The author assumes that preservation is required, that we cannot get those medicines somewhere else, like from the plants we have already studied and perhaps reproduced elsewhere such as in labs and greenhouses. That's not a nested conditional, but just a "plain vanilla" conditional claim.

If you are seeing something more, please share your proposed diagram of the relationship, and we will look it over and see if we can help further with this one. A nested conditional usually looks something like this:

A (B C)

[serenapao]

Hi!

I understand why A is correct and why the other answer choices do NOT contain necessary assumptions. However, even though I understand why C is not necessary, I am wondering if it strengthens the argument (if this were a Strengthen question, could it be the right answer)?

It seems like (C) strengthens/explains a premise from the argument that "it is very likely that many such plants also contain substances of medicinal value]. Does offering a sub-premise to support an existing premise from the argument strengthen the argument itself, since we already take all existing premises to be true?

An analogy:
Argument 1: Riding motorcycles is dangerous. People should not do dangerous things. Therefore, people should not ride motorcycles.
Argument 2: Riding motorcycles is dangerous because 20% of people who ride them will get into a serious car crash. People should not do dangerous things. Therefore, people should not ride motorcycles.

Are both arguments valid? Or is argument 2 stronger than argument 1 since it contains a sub-premise that supports the premise about riding motorcycles being dangerous? Thanks!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi serenapao,

Yes, offering additional evidence that supports the conclusion of the argument (even if it does seem to also support one of the premises) can strengthen an argument.

One point to note is that the words "it is very likely" in the stimulus allow for some uncertainty, so additional facts can bolster that claim.

Argument 1 in your example is logically valid as written, so the addition of the 20% statistic does not strengthen the argument. (You can't really strengthen an argument that is 100% valid. I suppose one could offer independent support for the conclusion that may make the argument valid for more than one reason, but this isn't really strengthening the original argument itself.)

Unlike Argument 1 in your example, the argument in the stimulus is not valid as written. As a general rule, arguments in Strengthen, Assumption, and Justify questions will not be valid as written.