LR Drill Set 12, Question 9
A new mall would increase property values, provide(38 more words not shown)
The reasoning above is flawed(3 more words not shown)
- Apresumes, without providing(8 more words not shown)
- Bfails to consider(11 more words not shown)
- Ctakes for granted(14 more words not shown)
- Dconfuses a cause(3 more words not shown)
- Econfuses a condition(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The mall could bring all three benefits. Is it the only way to get them?
At first, I'd also want to know the costs. Maybe building the mall means clearing a forest or adding an unattractive building. Those are possible objections to approving it even if it brings benefits.
But watch what this argument actually concludes: without approval, people who want those benefits will be disappointed.
That leaves out other ways to get what they want. Convenient stores could open in existing buildings. Another source of tax revenue could fund city projects. Better schools could make nearby homes more valuable. These are possibilities, not claims about what this city will do. They show that rejecting this mall doesn't automatically rule out the desired results.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw, I'd say the author treats one way to achieve these goals as though it were the only way. We can accept the entire first sentence and still ask how the author has ruled out alternatives.
Working the answers
- A
The conclusion concerns people who already want higher property values. It doesn't have to establish that higher values benefit everyone. A renter, for example, might have a different view. The problem is the prediction that the people who do want these results must be disappointed without this mall.
- B
The author explicitly considers the proposal not being approved. That's what “unless the mall proposal is approved” introduces. The error lies in what the author says will follow from rejection, not in a failure to consider rejection at all.
- C
The first sentence directly gives us the mall's expected effects. It doesn't merely report that malls and higher property values tend to appear together and then infer causation from that pattern. Our objection can accept the stated causal claim: this mall would help. What hasn't been established is that nothing else would help.
- D
The argument doesn't switch the direction of cause and effect. It never says, for example, that rising property values cause the mall to be built. It moves from the mall producing benefits to the claim that no mall means no benefits. The mistake concerns other possible routes to the outcome.
- ECorrect
“Sufficient” means enough to produce the result; “necessary” means required for it. The premise presents the mall as a way to bring the desired benefits. The conclusion treats its approval as something people must have to get those benefits.
If other developments could supply convenient shopping, tax revenue, and higher property values, the residents could get what they want without this proposal. That's why a claim about what the mall would accomplish doesn't establish what is impossible without it.
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