Question Help

[gmosquera42]

Good morning,

I am studying Ch. 7 "Weaken" and I have a question with regards to a sample question. It seems that question stem of example 5 on page 249 of the 2017 version of Logic and Reasoning Bible may be a Strengthen question and not a Weaken question.

The Stem reads as follows

"Each of the following, if true, weakens the politician's argument EXCEPT:"

On page 89 example 1, of Ch. 3 "Question Stem and Answer Choices" demonstrates the below.

Each of the following, if true, strengthens the argument above EXCEPT".

In the text, it clarifies that the correct answer would be one that "Does not Strengthen"

Can you please clarify the difference between the question in Ch. 7 and example demonstrated in Ch. 3


**** This is all from the 2017 Addition of the Logic and Reasoning Bible.

[Dave Killoran]

Hey G,

The appearance of the word "except" in question stems can be confusing, and I'm glad that you are citing page 89 since that section is key to understanding how the word works. Let's apply the same analysis from page 89 to the question stem on page 249:

• "Each of the following, if true, weakens the politician's argument:"
  
  One correct answer: Weaken
  Four incorrect answers: Do not weaken
  
  "Each of the following, if true, weakens the politician's argument EXCEPT:"
  
  One correct answer: Does not Weaken
  Four incorrect answers: Weaken

So, looking at that second example (which matches page 249), is that a Strengthen question? No, because "Strengthen" is not the same as "Does not Weaken" (the conceptual relationship that underlies this idea is discussed in greater deal in a section called Logical Opposition that starts on page 355). So, if anything, this would be a "Does not Weaken" question. But to call it that would be unnecessarily confusing, and since the base concept revolves around Weakening (and 4 of the answers do so), we call this a Weaken Except question (or, as seen in our score reports, WeakenX).

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[gmosquera42]

That was insightful, thank you for the help. Looks like I need a deeper dive into ch.3 so that this does not happen in the future. Thanks again!