#12 - Politician: The huge amounts of money earned by oil

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (A)

The politician’s argument in this stimulus is as follows:

So long as regulations are not excessively burdensome, oil companies to continue to make profits necessary for risky exploration investments:

Statement:

• Regulations do not overburden oil industry profit sufficient to invest

Contrapositive:

• oil industry profits sufficient regulation do not overburden

But, says the politician, the oil companies do not have profits higher than all other companies, so the regulations must be overly burdensome:

• Oil co’s profits not higher than all other industries regulations overburden

As we can see from the conclusion as diagrammed above, the politician appears to presume that if an oil company is not more profitable than all others, then the oil industry must be making profits which are insufficient to allow for further risky investment.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. The politician fails to support the presumption referenced in the discussion above: that to allow for risky investment, the politician assumes that the oil industry must be more profitable than all other industries.

Answer choice (B): Since there is no character attack present in the politician’s argument, this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice describes a causal flaw, which is not found in the politicians argument.

Answer choice (D): The premise that the oil industry is not the most profitable is not based on absence of evidence, but on recent data, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (E): This answer choice describes the flaw of referencing an exceptional case. This is not the flaw in the argument of the politician, who presumes that the failure to be the most profitable industry means insufficient funds for risky investment.

[rameday]

Hello,

So my pre phrase for this question was causal reasoning. So RBE -> low industry profits. So I was searching for causal language and I selected C.

Not sure why that is wrong and A is correct.

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi rameday,

As discussed in the online explanation of this question, the stimulus contains conditional, not causal, reasoning. The author remarks that if the regulations are not excessively burdensome, then the oil industry will make profits sufficient to motivate risky investments:

Not excessively burdensome Profits sufficient to motivate risky investments

But, the politician continues, the oil industry revenues are not the highest among all industries. So, the conclusion goes, the regulations are excessively burdensome.

The conclusion is an attempted contrapositive of the original premise. However, we don't exactly know that the oil industry's profits aren't sufficient to motivate risky investments; all we know is that they aren't the highest in the industry. For the contrapositive to work, we need to assume that if the oil industry revenues are not the highest among all industries, then they cannot be sufficient to motivate risky behavior:

Profits NOT the highest among all industries Profits NOT sufficient to motivate risky investments

Answer choice (A) describes the contrapositive of this presumption, and is therefore correct.

Regarding answer choice (C), the conclusion does not state that the excessive regulatory burden has lowered the oil industry profits. While this is clearly an underlying presupposition, the argument does not infer that such a relationship exists by observing a correlation between burdensome regulations and low industry profits. The premises do not describe a correlation, and no causal flaw exists in the argument.

Hope this helps!