#13 - Politician: The bill that makes using car phones while

[mpoulson]

Team,

This was very insightful. I think I was in the ball park before and now I think I've found my seat. Thank you. Until next time.

- Micah

[cmorris32]

Hi PowerScore!

Is it correct to rationalize that answer choice D is correct for these reasons:

The conclusion to the politician's statement is that the bill should be adopted. According to the Mechanistic Approach, any new element in the conclusion will appear in the correct answer. Since the rest of the stimulus does not discuss the bill specifically being adopted, the correct answer choice must address the bill being adopted. Answer choice D is the only answer choice that addresses this, so it must be the correct answer?

Thank you!
Caroline

[Adam Tyson]

That's a perfect use of the Mechanistic Approach, Caroline! Excellent work!

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.,
The explanations posted have been helpful but I have remaining questions. Does the last sentence in the stimulus have conditional reasoning that we need to follow? Can someone please confirm if my reasoning is correct or incorrect?
I picked correct answer D using my reasoning:
Conc- 1st sentence
Premise 1: uses new concepts- Distracts driver and public safety
Premise 2: I wrote out conditional reasoning like this:
If illegal to use care phones while driving people will stop using car phones

From this I predicted the assumption is: Car phones are bad for public safety.
This lead me to pick answer choice D. I wrote out conditional reasoning for answer choice D as:
Law reduced threat to Public safety adopt law

Because this answer choice matched my prediction I chose it. If I write out conditional reasoning in premises or answer choices, do I need to write out the contrapositive? In this problem, I didn't and I was able to pick the correct answer.

Thanks in advance

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi GGIBA003,

You are correct that there's conditional reasoning in the last sentence, but it's not a critical aspect of the argument. You certainly can diagram it in the way you did, but personally, I would not. The argument is understandable without the conditional diagram, and the critical aspect of the answer choice is addressing the jump from "this will help public safety" to "this is something that should be adopted."

Hope that helps!