#23 - Sabina: The words used in expressing facts affect

[Administrator]

Question Explanation

Point at Issue. The correct answer choice is (E)

The argument between Sabina and Emile focuses on the style in which arguments are expressed. Sabina believes that style is irrelevant to the validity of an argument while Emile believes that style is important.

Answer choice (A) is incorrect since both speakers would probably agree with the statement. Also, the issue is about using words, not defining words.

Answer choice (B) is incorrect because Sabina's opinion on the statement is unknown.

Both would probably agree with answer choices (C) and (D).

[lday4]

Can you explain what exactly makes E a better choice than A? I know that Sabina mentions that words needs to be clearly/consistently defined, but because she first says, "The words used in expressing facts affect neither the facts nor the conclusions those facts will support" and did not clarify in this sentence the correct definition of words, that to me seemed like enough support that Sabina would disagree with A.

E also did not seem ideal because although we know that Emile would definitely agree with the statement, we don't know that Sabina would always disagree with this statement. 1, what it describes (premise truth and relationship to the conclusion) doesn't seem to equate exactly with what's described in the stimulus and 2, a factor seems too vague and could apply to something other than words which is the only factor Sabina describes.

Thanks!

[David Boyle]

Can you explain what exactly makes E a better choice than A? I know that Sabina mentions that words needs to be clearly/consistently defined, but because she first says, "The words used in expressing facts affect neither the facts nor the conclusions those facts will support" and did not clarify in this sentence the correct definition of words, that to me seemed like enough support that Sabina would disagree with A.

E also did not seem ideal because although we know that Emile would definitely agree with the statement, we don't know that Sabina would always disagree with this statement. 1, what it describes (premise truth and relationship to the conclusion) doesn't seem to equate exactly with what's described in the stimulus and 2, a factor seems too vague and could apply to something other than words which is the only factor Sabina describes.

Thanks!

Hello,

"Moreover, if the words are clearly defined and consistently used, the actual words chosen make no difference to an argument's soundness." seems to show that Sabina would agree with answer A, since she likes clear definitions.
E is a good answer, since "the truth of an argument's premises nor the logical relation between its premises and its conclusion" seems to match up with "facts", "conclusions", and "soundest argument" from the stimulus. And "factor" goes along with, "After all, many words have social and political connotations that influence people's response to claims expressed in those words . . . . Since whether people will acknowledge a fact is affected by how the fact is expressed, the conclusions they actually draw are also affected."

David

[kells__w]

Hi,
I need help understanding why E is a better choice over D. I thought D was the correct answer because from my interpretation of Sabina's argument, that she believes no matter how you word something it cannot affect the meaning of facts and overall conclusion presented by them, that she would disagree. Whereas, Emile would agree as he believes one's choice of words in presenting facts can affect people's interpretation of them and the conclusions they draw from said facts. For the same reasoning, I thought E was wrong because it's talking about "a factor that affects neither the truth of an argument's premise nor the logical relation between its premise and conclusion" but that doesn't apply to Emile's argument because he talks about factors that can affect the truth of a premise or logical relation between premises and conclusion. Could you please explain why my reasoning was wrong for D and why E is right?
Thanks in advance!

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey KellsW,

In answer choice D, "It would be a good policy" is questionable languange. I don't know if we can find either speaker who would endorse a good policy. More importantly, in answer choice D, the answer choice also states: "likely to lead people either to misunderstand the claims being made or to reason badly about them ." Emile did not have anything in her argument about words that cause us to misunderstand arguments or reasoning badly about those arguments. She simply said, the arguments can be bad if certain words are chosen, but that is far different than the person hearing the argument reasoning badly about those arguments.

We simply do not have a speaker that agrees with the specific languange in answer choice D. You can treat the agree part of the agree disagree test similarly to how you would treat an answer choice in a must be true question.

With answer choice E, Sabina agrees and Emile disagrees. The first, 2nd and third sentence in Sabina's argument leads Sabina to agree with E. Emile's first sentence is probably enough to get Emile to disagree with answer choice E, but when you add the second sentence as well, you can definitively say that she disagrees.

I hope all this helps and good luck with your studies.

Best,
Ryan

[shanhickey]

I think I'm having trouble understanding why D is correct over C. I do not see how Sabina could agree with that when she makes an argument that words make no difference in an argument's soundness. I also thought that answer choice D was worded in a very tricky way. I initially ignored it because I didn't think truth had anything to do with the argument, but I was wrong.

[katehos]

Hi Shan,

To preface my answer, I'd like to quickly note that it seems like you may be referring to answer choice (E) - which is the correct answer and references the 'truth' mentioned in your post - as opposed to answer choice (D). If I am incorrect, please let me know and I will happily address any additional questions

For Point at Issue questions like this, the best answer will be the one that illustrates where the speakers disagree. If we boil down each person's argument to the simplest terms, we can see that Sabina is arguing argument form doesn't matter, while Emile is arguing that form matters. Answer choice (E) points out this point of disagreement as it illustrates how factors that do not affect the truth of facts/conclusions (such as word choice) can affect the soundness of an argument. When we subject this to the Agree/Disagree Test, we can see that Sabina would disagree and Emile would agree.

Answer Choice (C), on the other hand, would, if anything, be a point of agreement. Though we don't have a lot of concrete information to draw any substantive conclusion from, we can actually eliminate the answer regardless of whether or not we can prove they'd both agree, since that same lack of information prevents us from proving it's a point of disagreement!

Hope this helps
Kate

[lsatquestions]

Hi Ryan, I ultimately picked E but was stuck between that and D as a contender. Emile says that certain words have connotations that influence how people will respond to claims using those words. Does this mean people are not necessarily misunderstanding such a claim, but simply refusing to accept it based on the language used, hence making the claim ineffective and poor?