#8-Rossi: It is undemocratic for people to live under a government

[Sjd207@scarletmail.rutgers.edu]

Hey everyone! I am not the best at method questions, and noticed there was not an explanation to this question. If someone could help explain it, I would greatly appreciate it!

[Bob O'Halloran]

Hi Sjd207,
Thank you for the question.
You are not alone. Method of reasoning questions often give students difficulty.
The stimulus presents us a dialogue , but then the question stem tells us we just have to focus on Rossi's argument. This means we can safely ignore Smith for this question.
First we try and paraphrase Rossi's argument. He makes a statement about representation in government and then applies it to a group of people(children)
Now we can look at the answer choices and determine which one best fits.
(A) the statement could be considered a principle so we keep this.
(B)There is no opponent mentioned. So this is out.
(C)There is no consequences mentioned. We can eliminate this one
(D)No substitution of description for rational, We strike this.
(E)There is no term used in two different senses, so this is out.

By focusing on Rossi and paraphrasing the argument we can go thought our answer choices and come to the correct answer fairly quickly.
I hope this helps.
Bob

[kinleyjmiller]

Hi!!

I incorrectly chose C because I was thinking that Smith was rejecting Rossi's argument by saying that it would have the predictable consequence of children voting with "conceptions of what can or should be done [that] are too simple".

I understand why A is correct, but could someone please further break down how I would have eliminated C?

Thanks!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Kinley,

For this question, we are focused on Rossi's argument. Since Rossi's comment comes prior to Smith's we don't need to care about Smith's interpretation of Rossi. We only need to focus on what Rossi said. Rossi doesn't address the consequences of their view at all. There's no evaluation of consequences. There's not even a discussion of consequences. For a method of reasoning answer choice to be correct, it needs to accurately describe what the argument does.

Hope that helps!