#8 - Sociologist: The claim that there is a large number of

[IsaiahSaeil92]

Hi Powerscore! I am wondering whether the "sufficient/necessary confusion flaw" implies a "circular flaw"?
I diagrammed the stimulus as followings:
crime rare occurrences newspapers are likely to print.
newspapers are likely to print.

Large # V.C = rare occurrences

It seems like a necessary/sufficient confusion error
A-->B
B

[IsaiahSaeil92]

Hi Powerscore! I am wondering whether the "sufficient/necessary confusion flaw" implies a "circular flaw"?
I diagrammed the stimulus as followings:
crime rare occurrences newspapers are likely to print.
newspapers are likely to print.

Large # V.C = rare occurrences

It seems like a necessary/sufficient confusion error
A-->B
B

[Dana D]

Hey Isaiah,


As noted in the previous replies here, yes, there is circular logic in this stimulus, which is why answer choice (B) is correct. It is not a NA/SA error, but rather an error due to the conclusion being supported only by a restatement of the conclusion.

[nonowing]

I'm confused on this question -- let me know where my mistake is.

Here's how I interpreted the stimulus: there aren't that many crimes in society, because they tend to be over-reported by newspapers, distorting people's perceptions of reality. We don't know how much they are over-reported, so I thought the author assumed that the over-reporting means that there aren't many crimes, (the number still could be "large" even if it is over-reported). How I thought of this is like the TV news -- almost every day, we hear about some tragedy in some part of the world (a claim could be made that tv news stations profit when bad things happen). But this does not mean that the number of tragedies is increasing or that the problems of society are getting worse -- indeed, they may be getting better, just we have more coverage now. I could not find any answer that matched this thinking, so I guessed under timed conditions and moved on.

Can you explain why this argument is circular? I thought that the argument has support for the claim that a higher number and/or relative proportion of newspaper stories about violent crimes might lead people to assume incorrectly that there actually are a lot of violent crimes. In other words, couldn't the fact that newspapers are print happy with violent crime stories lead people to believe that the number of violent crimes is worse than it actually is? I understand that the claim is much stronger than that, I'm just having trouble understanding why the argument is circular rather than "too strong" for the evidence given.

[Adam Tyson]

The argument boils down to this, nonowing: there aren't a large number of these crimes, because they are rare.

But isn't that saying the same thing in the premise as it says in the conclusion? That's what makes it circular.

All that other stuff about newspapers was based on that same premise, that the crimes are actually rare. The author is saying that the only reason they print those stories is because they are rare, but that's what the author is trying to prove! There really isn't any evidence that they are rare. The author didn't cite police reports, for example, or surveys, or insurance statistics. It's just based on "trust me, bro!" That's the essence of a circular argument: the author says they are right because they are right, and they offer no evidence in support of that claim.