#14 - Necessary Some people claim that every human discovery

[jonwg5121]

I think I am misunderstanding the stimulus then. Can you please show me what is wrong with my line of thinking?

I knew that I had to connect the premises to the "obliged to take their claim seriously" part.

The conclusion stated: obliged to take claim seriously-->more interesting opinion
The contrapostive being (uninteresting opinion-->not obliged to take claim seriously)

So when I saw (A): Trivial claims-->uninteresting
I thought that would then become
Trivial claim-->uninteresting opinion-->not obliged to take claim seriously
which connects the premise to the conclusion. (I thought that was how we could connect "trivial" and "not obliged to take seriously")

Whereas in (C): Trivial claim-->not worthy of serious consideration, does connect to "not obliged to claim seriously", I don't see how it connects to the "uninteresting" part of the argument.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain this.

[David Boyle]

I think I am misunderstanding the stimulus then. Can you please show me what is wrong with my line of thinking?

I knew that I had to connect the premises to the "obliged to take their claim seriously" part.

The conclusion stated: obliged to take claim seriously-->more interesting opinion
The contrapostive being (uninteresting opinion-->not obliged to take claim seriously)

So when I saw (A): Trivial claims-->uninteresting
I thought that would then become
Trivial claim-->uninteresting opinion-->not obliged to take claim seriously
which connects the premise to the conclusion. (I thought that was how we could connect "trivial" and "not obliged to take seriously")

Whereas in (C): Trivial claim-->not worthy of serious consideration, does connect to "not obliged to claim seriously", I don't see how it connects to the "uninteresting" part of the argument.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain this.

Hello jonwg5121,

You bring up some interesting points, and the stimulus has some strange language ("trivially", "more interesting interpretation", etc.) However, one may have to split some hairs in dealing with the stimulus.
As Jeff notes above, it is nice to have a connection with "not taking seriously". C provides that explicitly. But does A also provide it?
It might seem to offhand, but it might not really do so. That is, your "The contrapostive [sic] being (uninteresting opinion-->not obliged to take claim seriously)" might really be "opinion that is as interesting or less interesting not obliged". If it is that way, then even if every trivial opinion is uninteresting, still, some may be *more interesting* (or less uninteresting) than others.
E.g., even if "All pineapples are unattractive" (due to spikiness etc.), that would still allow some pineapples to be uglier, or conversely, less unattractive, than others. On that note, even an uninteresting opinion could be more interesting than a worse, more uninteresting opinion. So answer A does not give an airtight route to the conclusion, like C does.
Sounds like hairsplitting, but it may work!

Hope this helps,
David

[Agent00729]

I guessed on this one and got it right, but still don’t see exactly how C is correct and A is wrong.

If no claims that are trivial are worthy of serious consideration, then doesn’t that weaken the argument? Because this would imply that it doesn’t matter how much more interesting you make the claim, it will still never be worthy of serious consideration.

It seems like instead we need to connect trivial to “interesting” in some way in order to strengthen the conclusion that if it’s not more interesting, they can’t take it seriously.

Thanks for the help!

[Agent00729]

To add, I feel like C would only make sense if we knew that if something is trivial, it can never be made it be more interesting.

Appreciate the help!

[Robert Carroll]

Agent,

The argument isn't committed to the idea that if a claim were to be made more interesting, it would then be something we are obligated to take seriously. We can even diagram the conclusion, which uses the word "until", via the Unless Equation, if we want to:

obliged to take the relevant claim seriously that claim has a more interesting interpretation than it presently has

So if a more interesting interpretation is provided, that would meet a necessary condition for taking the claim more seriously, but not a sufficient one.

So answer choice (C) does not weaken the argument. If nothing trivial can ever be something to take seriously, that's not incompatible with the conclusion, which wants us not to take something seriously. As my diagram shows, the conclusion isn't saying that you SHOULD start taking it seriously if it gets more interesting (or, indeed, ever). The conclusion purely limits when it should be taken seriously, and does nothing to affirm circumstances when it is appropriate to take it seriously.

We have here a claim that is trivial, and the conclusion thinks we should deny it serious consideration. That seems to make answer choice (C) provide the perfect connection - if it's trivial (and it is), you should deny it serious consideration (as the conclusion says).

It doesn't seem relevant how interesting trivial claims are. The conclusion wants to prevent taking it seriously as it stands, and may (only may) reconsider if it becomes more interesting. If it's uninteresting right now (as answer choice (A) is establishing), I don't see what that has to do with whether we should take it seriously.

Robert Carroll