#11 - No one who lacks knowledge of a subject is competent

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the reasoning—SN. The correct answer choice is (D)

The author of this stimulus makes a conditional argument, but does not make an error on this point. The premise is that if one lacks knowledge about a subject, then one is incompetent to pass judgment on that subject. The argument then proceeds to show that seasoned politicians have political know-how. From that, the author concludes that only seasoned politicians are competent to pass judgment on a particular political policy. If, for the moment, we assume that political know-how is the same as knowledge about a particular political policy, then this argument is valid. Graphically, the argument is diagrammed as: IF NOT knowledge about a subject, THEN NOT competent to pass judgment on that subject. Therefore, IF one is to be competent to pass judgment on that subject, THEN one must have knowledge about a subject, equaling the political know-how of a seasoned politician, according to our assumption. This is a valid contrapositive. However, intuitively, it is a big leap to equate political know-how generally with knowledge about a particular subject. And this is where the argument falters—it gives no reason why the two should be equated.

Answer choice (A) The argument does do this (generalizes that knowledge about a subject is necessary to competently pass judgment), but such a generalization is not the reason the argument is flawed. Rather, the argument makes a big leap in logic to from its premises to its conclusion.

Answer choice (B) It is not essential to the argument to show how political know-how is acquired.

Answer choice (C) The term "apprenticeship" does not play a crucial role in the argument.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. It identifies the rather big leap in logic noted earlier, in equating political know-how with the knowledge about a subject that is necessary to pass judgment on that subject.

Answer choice (E) Inexperienced politicians do not even come into play in this argument, which only deals with seasoned politicians. Furthermore, the stimulus does not even mention the setting of policy, but rather the judgment thereof.

[reop6780]

I chose answer A instead of the correct answer of D.

First of all, I have a question that I held for a long time: What is "generalization" ?

It seems as if according to the context, the range of generalization varies...

Anyway, I thought the stimuli started with "generalization" that "no one..that subject," and the characteristic derived from the generalization makes politicians competent to judge.

Is answer A at least true statement? (just not flaw?) Or, doesn't it even correctly reflect the stimuli?

Additionally about the answer D, doesn't know-how part of knowledge?

How can I infer that only "understanding the social implications of political policies" is the proper form of knowledge ?

Or, does "understanding.." mean "insight and style learned.." and the answer D finds the flaw of misdescribing it as know-how?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Hyun,

"Generalization," especially as it applies to Flaw questions, refers to when an author applies what is true of a few occurrences or cases to a much larger group. For example: "Two of my friends hated the new J.K. Rowling book. Therefore, everyone must hate the new J.K. Rowling book." In this example, the author has taken what is true of a very small sample ("two of my friends") and applied it to a much larger group ("everyone"). That is certainly a flaw, but it's not what we have in this question.

The first sentence in this stimulus is a conditional statement, which by their nature tend to be a bit broad so it's understandable that you would get confused. But this conditional statement is presented to us as a rule to accept and so it doesn't quite fit the "generalization" flaw that I gave in the example above. Basically, if you have a "generalization" flaw, you should see the author make that leap from "this is true for some" to "therefore, this is true for all." We don't see that leap in this stimulus.

As for why answer choice (D) is correct....the flaw in this stimulus is similar to the "uncertain use of a term or concept" flaw. "Political know-how" refers to knowing how to maneuver governmental leaders and agencies to get what you want done. It means knowing who to talk to, what to offer them, how to make deals, how to convince people to side with your bills, etc.

Judging "whether a particular policy is fair to all" however, is a very different matter. A politician might be very good at pushing legislation through Congress (in other words, has plenty of "political know-how") but may not consider the social implications of that legislation at all. A cynical person might say that there are politicians who have enough political know-how to get re-elected again and again but who have little concern for the people they serve or the social implications of the policies they support. If you've ever watched an episode of "House of Cards," Kevin Spacey's character is a great example of political know-how without much consideration of the social implications.

Answer choice (D) best describes the author's shift from "political know-how" to "judging whether a policy is fair" and so it is the best answer.

Hope that helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[reop6780]

Thank you so much!

Your detailed explanation helped me a lot!

[AnnBar]

Hi there,

Could you please explain a little more about conditional statements and the word "No".

Thank you,
AB

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi AnnBar,

If you mean specifically as it relates to this question, "no one who" indicates the sufficient condition is coming, and in order to maintain the logic of the statement, you then need to negate the necessary condition:
lacks knowledge competent to pass judgment

However, how "no" functions will be dependent on the location in the statement, the type of statement, etc. If you have a specific example you'd like to work through, or if you'd like to give us a bit more info about what you're looking for here, we're glad to help!

[Sophia123]

Hi,

I am slightly confused on the way that the second sentence is diagrammed to be the contrapositive of the first sentence. While I see how "No one who lacks knowledge of a subject is competent to pass judgment on that subject" equates to lacks knowledge NOT competent to pass judgment, I wouldn't have diagrammed the second sentence as competent NOT lacks knowledge. Admittedly, I relied on the indicator word "only" and in a rush tried to make that portion about competence as the necessary condition (basically I interpreted this statement to be a mistaken negation of the first premise). However, in stepping back from the argument, I am still a bit confused about nature of the conditional relationships that would create the diagram of the second sentence given in the original explanation?

Thank you in advance!

-Sophia

[AthenaDalton]

Hi Sophia,

Thanks for your question!

The first sentence ("no one who lacks knowledge of a subject is competent to pass judgment") can be diagrammed like this:

knowledge of subject competent to pass judgment

The contrapositive is:

competent to pass judgment has knowledge of the subject

The key phrases of the second sentence ("political know-how is . . . learned through experience, therefore only seasoned politicians are competent to judge whether a particular policy is fair to all") can be diagrammed like this:

politicians competent to pass judgment on fairness of policies have knowledge of "political know-how"

This highlights the flaw in the reasoning. According to the rules set up in the stimulus, a person that has knowledge in a particular area is competent to judge in that same area. Then we get info about people with a lot of political know-how judging the fairness of social programs -- a huge mis-match according to the terms of the problem.

Getting the exact diagram of the second sentence isn't critical; once you understand how the rule in the first sentence works you should be able to assess the flaw in the second sentence.

I hope this helps -- good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[AspiringLawyer]

Without even considering a single a/c, I first asked myself what is the flaw? My answer is the connection of "political know-how is a matter of... experience" and "only seasoned (a/k/a experienced) politicians are competent to judge."

That is why I do not fully understand why (A) is wrong. The "characteristic" referred to in (A) is "experience," and it undeniably is a weakness of the argument to generalize that experience makes someone competent to pass judgment. I guess I am having trouble with the language "equates" in (D). I find "equate" to mean "makes equal." Therefore, I read (D) as "the argument states that political know-how is the same thing as understanding the social implications of political policies." To me, that latter part refers to "judging whether a particular political policy is fair." (D) is stating that political know-how (knowledgeable) = understanding social implications of policies (competent to pass judgment). But I do not see how the argument equates them at all, as the argument is grounded in conditional reasoning:

Sentence 1: NOT Knowledgeable NOT Competent to pass judgment
Sentence 2: Knowledgeable (political know-how) Competent to pass judgment (determine is policy is fair)

Thus, I would categorize the error as Mistaken Negation. The problem is none of the a/c's state: "Taking the nonexistence of something as evidence that a necessary precondition for that thing also did not exist”!

Please help

[mjb514]

I understand that political know-how should not be equated with knowledge about a particular subject. However, answer choice D states that political know-how is being equated with social implications. In my opinion, social implications and general knowledge are not the same. I'm confused about the language choice here.