#13 - James: Many people claim that the voting public is

[lilmissunshine]

Hello,

I initially picked (A) knowing it's not ideal, because "some of the same issues as Reade" are not necessarily the complex campaign issues. However, I have a hard time understanding why (D) is superior. James only claims that Reade is more popular because his television commercials discuss complex campaign issues. However, the voters do not necessarily need to know Reade's positions on campaign issues, as long as they see Reade's discussion of complex campaign issues. Positions on issues are different from complex issues per se. Does it make sense? Moreover, like (A), (D) does not specify complex campaign issues, either.

Could you explain it for me? Many thanks!

[James Finch]

Hi Lil Miss Sunshine,

It's helpful on questions like this one that have multiple speakers to first identify what their respective arguments are and where they differ. James is attempting to use Reade's relative popularity to argue that the voting public can evaluate complex campaign issues; Maria is attempting to undermine James's causal argument that the voting public supports Reade because of his positions on campaign issues, instead positing an alternate cause, competence and trustworthiness.

In order to support Maria's claim, we would either need to bolster Reade's competence and trustworthiness or attack the link between his popularity and his positions on campaign issues. As you note, answer choice (A) is simply too broad a statement to have any effect on the argument one way or the other; if it did, it would tend to support, not undermine, James's argument. (D) works by muddying the link between Reade's popularity and positions on campaign issues: if most people don't know what those positions are, they can't be using those positions to justify supporting Reade over anyone else (this applies to positions on all campaign issues, including complex ones). Instead, there must be an alternate cause for Reade's popularity, as Maria is arguing.

Hope this clears things up!

[cleocleozuo]

Just want to confirm my thinking process:

There are essentially 2 hypotheses, the first one is understanding complex argument causes the candidate's popularity, the second one is being trustworthy and competent causes the candidate's popularity. In order to strengthen M's argument who supports the second hypothesis, you can either 1) undermine the first/competing hypothesis or 2) strengthen the second hypothesis. The answer choice D undermines the first hypothesis. Answer choice E appears to strengthen the second one but "some" is too weak to do that. Am I on the right track? When we have two competing hypotheses, are there always two ways to strengthening? (eg: by strengthening one or weakening the other one)

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi cleocleo,

That's an interesting way to look at this one. We have an effect that both speakers agree on---Reade is the more popular candidate. James notes that he discusses complex issues in his ads, and the viewers like him. This isn't explicitly causal though---James isn't saying that it's because of the complex issues that viewers like Reade. He just notes that both occur, and uses this to support another idea---that viewers must understand those issues if they like the candidate.

Maria takes a different approach. She says that the popularity actually has nothing to do with the issues. James doesn't take a clear position on the cause of the popularity. Maria clearly links the cause of the popularity to the trustworthiness of Reade. Remember that for a causal argument, eliminating an alternate cause will strengthen the argument. That's what answer choice (D) does here. It eliminates the issues as a potential cause of the popularity. It doesn't matter what James thinks about the cause. It only matters that Maria thinks it was something other than the issues, and answer choice (D) eliminated the potential for the issues to be the cause of the popularity.

Answer choice (E) is wrong for a few reasons. One is to note that the answer choice says that some voters find Reade trustworthy. But that doesn't mean that he's the most trustworthy, as Maria posits. It also wouldn't support the causal relationship. Just because they find him trustworthy doesn't mean that they would necessarily find him the more popular candidate.

Hope that helps!