#13 - Historian: The ancient Greeks failed to recognize that

[PositiveThinker]

I don't even know where to begin with this question. I could barely even see the flawed method of reasoning in the stimulus. Im assuming its a flaw in composition? I know that composition flaw is giving an entire group the characteristic just because one part of the group has said characteristic. The stimulus *sort of* feels like that but not entirely. So i went to the questions as best as I could..


I originally C and that was wrong. It seemed parallel to the stimulus. I eliminated answer D which was correct and i do not see that at all. And i couldn't eliminate answer choice E..

So if I could get a little help on this. Why C and E are wrong, why E is right, and what is the flaw in the stimulus if the one i pointed to above was incorrect.

Thank you!

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi PT,

It looks like you are on the right track here. The stimulus tells us that because it is wrong for any individual to have a certain power, it must be at least as wrong for a group of people to have that power.

Choice (D) parallels this perfectly by asserting that because no individual member of a club can afford something, the club as a whole cannot afford that item. This is the correct answer.

Choice (C) lacks any mention of a collective. Instead it tells us that if an action is wrong for any single person, then it must be wrong for any other single person.

Choice (E) does discuss individuals vs groups, so it contains some attractive details. However, the reasoning does not proceed by telling us that if something is true of the individual it must be true of the group. Instead this answer claims that it is possible for every individual to be mistaken if society as a whole is mistaken. The flow of information is thus reversed: this argument makes claims that what is true of the group must be true of each individual.

Furthermore, Choice (E) brings in some questionable wording with the word possible. The stimulus makes a 100% certain claim, which ideally should be paralleled in the correct answer choice. Since choice (D) had such a definite, certain claim in it, you should be suspicious of this answer which merely tells us that something is possible.

As a final note, since Choice (E) merely tells us that it is possible that every individual is mistaken, this argument is not a composition flaw at all!

[tetsuya0129]

Hi there,

Thank you for all the help with my questions.

My two questions are:
1. For flawed parallel questions, which part--the flaw(s) presented from the premises or the particular conclusion made--should we focus on?
2. Is it true that the conclusion in each answer choice is all different patterns from the conclusion in the stimulus?


I usually tried to use my short-term memory to grasp both parts mentioned and scan each answer choice by examing its conclusion and then its flaw.

But, given that all answer choices presents different types of conclusions, this approach cost me almost 2 min on this question (along with my anxiety and curse). So I realized probably my approach was not very effective.

It would thus be very helpful if you could kindly address my questions. Thank you for the time and effort taken for these questions.

Leon

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Leon,

I'd encourage you to continue thinking holistically about the nature of "flaws," and thus holistically about the stimulus/answers on a Parallel Flaw question. A "flaw" in reasoning is simply a reason that a particular set of premises does not logically lead to a particular conclusion. So the "flaw" in any argument (if there is one) is the disconnect between premises and conclusion. To identify flaws as effectively as possible, the relationship between premises and conclusion must be considered holistically. So it's not helpful just to focus in one place rather than another on Parallel Flaw questions. Instead, you should be focused on identifying the reason or reasons (sometimes there's more than one flaw!) why the set of premises in the stimulus do not automatically lead to the conclusion in the stimulus.

Here, as Francis notes above, the flaw is a "Composition Flaw," where the author asserts that what is true of the parts of something is also true of that whole thing. You need to look at both the premise and the conclusion in the stimulus to see that this is the flaw.

As you mentioned, thinking holistically like this can take some time. And that's okay. Give yourself the time you need to sort answer choices here and try not to take too many shortcuts. This is also where practice becomes key, because the more you study flaws and learn to recognize them, the easier it's going to be to accurately identify a flaw on the first read through an argument.

On your second question, I'm not quite sure what you mean. It's not true that every conclusion in the answer choices will exhibit some basic logical difference from the conclusion in the stimulus. So you can't just focus on the conclusion by itself and expect that to lead automatically to the correct answer. But, if you do spot a difference in the conclusion in an answer choice that necessarily implies different logic than the stimulus, then you can safely rule that answer out (for example, here the conclusion is stated in absolute/certain terms, so an answer with a conclusion that is not stated in such terms is highly unlikely to be exhibiting the same flaw).

I hope this helps!

[tetsuya0129]

Hi Jeremy, thank you so much for the thorough explanation! I would adjust my perspective about flaws. My second question was meant to ask: regarding this question, is it true that the conclusion in each answer choice shows different logic patterns from the conclusion in the stimulus?

Because when I took this question, I found no similar logic/argumentation pattern between the stimulus's conclusion and each answer choice's.

[Jeremy Press]

Ah, ok Leon: well, the similarity that matters is present in the correct answer's conclusion, isn't it? The similarity that matters is that the conclusion makes a statement about a whole using information about that whole's parts. That's what happening in answer choice D, as Francis notes above (the conclusion is about a characteristic of the whole, the club, based on information about the characteristic of the parts, the members of the club).

[tetsuya0129]

Thank you Jeremy!

[relona]

Why is (A) incorrect? I understand why (D) is correct. I thought (A) was also an error of composition.

[Adam Tyson]

But it's not, relona! Answer A is flawed for at least a couple reasons, but there is no error of composition (part to whole) because the author does not argue that because no individual can solve the problem, no group of individuals can do so. Instead, it's "this one individual cannot, so none of these other individuals can." The conclusion isn't about the group being unable, but about each of the individuals in that group.

This also has the problem of limiting itself to evidence about a certain group of individuals (Robin's friends) and then drawing a conclusion about everyone in the whole world, a pretty gross over-generalization! That has no parallel in the stimulus, which is another reason why it's not a good answer.