#2 - Many people do not understand themselves, nor do they

[Jkjones3789]

Hello, So I see that the credited response is describing a circular reasoning I think? I chose A because I saw a without and didn't have a reason to choose any of the other choices. Can you please explain how this is circular or how it is however it is and how you go about doing Flaw Questions.

[Steve Stein]

Hi,

You're right; that is circular reasoning, described in the correct answer choice as restating the premise as the conclusion. Specifically, the author's argument breaks down as follows:

"Premise": If you don't understand yourself, you cannot understand others.

"Conclusion": "It is clear from this..." ...that if you don't understand yourself you cannot understand others.

Note that the author phrases the last sentence as a conclusion, despite the fact that the author is really only restating a premise.

I hope that's helpful! Let me know whether this is clear--thanks!

~Steve

[srr021]

Hi
I understand it is circular reasoning, but I don't understand why that is wrong. Aren't I supposed to accept the premises as true? If the premise is true, then the conditional statement is true. The conclusion is just the contrapositive of the conditional statement, so why is it wrong?

[Beatrice Brown]

Hi SRR! Happy to help you with this

You're correct that you're supposed to accept the premises as true, but this is different from circular reasoning. Circular reasoning means that the author's conclusion is identical to the premise offered to support that conclusion. The author of the stimulus uses circular reasoning because the conclusion of the argument (if you lack self-understanding, you can't understand others) is just the contrapositive of the premise (without self-understanding, you cannot understand others). A conditional statement and its contrapositive are identical in meaning.

This reasoning structure is different than a common valid conditional argument structure, which is the following:
Premise 1: If A is true, then B is true.
Premise 2: In this case, A is true.
Conclusion: Therefore, B is true.

In this valid reasoning structure, a conditional statement is offered as a premise and is then used to make a conclusion about whether a certain situation is true. By contrast, in the stimulus, the author offers a conditional statement as the premise of the argument, and instead of using it to draw a conclusion about whether a certain situation is true, they simply state the contrapositive is therefore also true. But remember that the contrapositive of a conditional statement is always true and is just a restatement of the original conditional statement. As a result, this would constitute circular reasoning.

To sum up, because the conclusion is just the contrapositive of the conditional statement offered as a premise, the argument uses circular reasoning. The contrapositive is just a restatement of the conditional statement, so the premise and the conclusion are identical in meaning. This is different than a valid argument structure that uses conditional reasoning, which would use a conditional statement to demonstrate that a given situation must be true.

I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any other questions!

[nickp18]

Hi PowerScore team!

I got this question correct but was slow in selecting the correct answer due to its conditionality. Can someone explain how it should be diagrammed?


Thank you!!

[atierney]

Yes, this is one of those questions where diagraming is probably not necessary. Indeed, the "flaw" in the argument is that it basically just repeats itself. But to see what it repeats, you could look at it like this:

UO---> SU. So, to understand others, you need to understand yourself. The conclusion here, however, really doesn't add anything to the first premise, and that's really what the question is asking you to recognize.

Let me know if you have any questions on this.