Regarding Course material, Lesson 12, p 12-11, #16

[AspenHerman]

How is this a justify question?

I thought that, based off the introduction to assume the truth of the passage, that this question had to be in Family 1, but to be honest, I had no idea what it could be. Is this some weird round about way to ask "the conclusion above is properly drawn if which one of the following is assumed?"

Any advice would be welcome. Thanks!!

Aspen

[Robert Carroll]

Aspen,

Good question! We are trusting the passage for this one, so it looks like a Prove, but we're also trusting the answer choices ("if one also knows that"), so it looks like it might be anything. So consider the exact task. We trust the stimulus, and trust the correct answer, and that correct answer will be sufficient to prove the conclusion that's given in the question itself. Isn't that what a Justify does? Trust the original premises, add the correct answer, and the combination gives you sufficient information to prove the conclusion. Rewriting this question by putting the "conclusion" into the stimulus would have made it more clear that this was a Justify, but note that you're not drawing an inference from the stimulus, so you can see this isn't a Prove (or Disprove) family question. And the answer helps, so it must be Help. From there we just consider what we're helping - we're helping make an argument perfect. That's Justify.

Robert Carroll

[AspenHerman]

Aspen,

Good question! We are trusting the passage for this one, so it looks like a Prove, but we're also trusting the answer choices ("if one also knows that"), so it looks like it might be anything. So consider the exact task. We trust the stimulus, and trust the correct answer, and that correct answer will be sufficient to prove the conclusion that's given in the question itself. Isn't that what a Justify does? Trust the original premises, add the correct answer, and the combination gives you sufficient information to prove the conclusion. Rewriting this question by putting the "conclusion" into the stimulus would have made it more clear that this was a Justify, but note that you're not drawing an inference from the stimulus, so you can see this isn't a Prove (or Disprove) family question. And the answer helps, so it must be Help. From there we just consider what we're helping - we're helping make an argument perfect. That's Justify.

Robert Carroll

Thank you for that analysis!!! It's definitely a stimulus that you have to parse the words, and I bet that there were some wrong answers that would satisfy a prove family question. How evil!!