#23 - Diplomat: Every major war in the last 200 years has

[aheartofsunshine]

Hello!

I am having difficulty on this flaw question. I originally chose B, however after reviewing I see I should have eliminated it due to the "reasons that, simply because weapons are used in war", because the argument does not reason that. If I would have eliminated B, I would have correctly chosen A. However, If I just look for the flaw in argument, it doesn't stand out to me. Here is how I broke down the argument:

Major War --> preceded by arms

no arms --> no major war

I'm not thinking it's a great argument, but it seemed logically correct to me, therefore it was hard to actually spot the flaw and just chose A because of that.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Looks like you treated this one conditionally, aheartofsunshine, instead of recognizing that the argument here is actually causal. The author starts off by telling us about a correlation, and ends by claiming that removing the first thing of the correlated pair will result in (cause) the removal or elimination of the second thing. A lack of weapons will, according to this author, cause a lack of wars (or, if you like, the author implies that the weapons build-up is causing war, so the argument is claiming that when the cause is removed, the effect will be removed). Once you see the causal nature of this argument, answer A should be much more obvious as the best description of that causal flaw.

[grunerlokka]

Looks like you treated this one conditionally, aheartofsunshine, instead of recognizing that the argument here is actually causal. The author starts off by telling us about a correlation, and ends by claiming that removing the first thing of the correlated pair will result in (cause) the removal or elimination of the second thing. A lack of weapons will, according to this author, cause a lack of wars (or, if you like, the author implies that the weapons build-up is causing war, so the argument is claiming that when the cause is removed, the effect will be removed). Once you see the causal nature of this argument, answer A should be much more obvious as the best description of that causal flaw.

Thanks for this explanation, it helped me see the causal (not conditional) nature of the argument: but where exactly is the causal flaw in the argument? In other words, is it flawed for the author to claim that when the cause is removed, the effect will be removed? It seemed to me to causally make sense, but I though it flawed because the author seemed to me to be veering from a causal relationship to a conditional one and it is that that did not seem right. What am I missing?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

The problem, lokka, is that the diplomat here doesn't establish a causal relationship. They merely establish a time-based relationship that A happens before B. The diplomat tells us that for the last 200 years, a build up of military equipment has come before a major war. But the problem here is that then the diplomat jumps to treating the relationship as a causal one in the conclusion by stating that removing the first event (build up) will remove the second (war). The diplomat cannot do that without establishing that the relationship between those two events is causal.

Let's look at a similarly structured argument.

Baseball player: Every time this season that Bob wears his red sunglasses, the Blue Sox win their game. So if we want to prevent the Blue Sox from winning, we just need to steal Bob's sunglasses.

This structure is very common in flawed superstition arguments, and I think it's easier to see there why it is that the fact that event A precedes event B doesn't mean that event A causes event B. That's accurate in this stimulus as well. Establishing that the build up preceded the war doesn't establish the causal relationship.

Hope that helps!
Rachael