PrepTest 102, Section 3, Question 14
Herbalist: Many of my customers find that their(42 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the herbalist's(6 more words not shown)
- Aattempts to force(14 more words not shown)
- Bbases a conclusion(8 more words not shown)
- Crejects a claim(13 more words not shown)
- Drelies on evidence(16 more words not shown)
- Emistakes the observation(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Did the juice improve their coordination, or did something else change? Maybe these customers started exercising, changed their diets, or simply expected to feel better. Improvement after drinking the juice does not settle what caused it.
But even if the juice helps, could it also hurt people?
That is what the doctors are warning about. The herbalist responds by accusing doctors of wanting control over medical treatments. That accusation does not tell us whether the juice is dangerous. A person can have a selfish motive and still give an accurate warning.
We also have a very broad conclusion: there is no reason not to try the juice. Really? What if it is prepared in an unclean container? Dismissing one warning would not rule out every possible reason to avoid it.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to identify the flaw. We have several concerns, so match the answer to what the herbalist actually does: brushes aside a warning about the juice by attacking the people who give it.
Working the answers
- A
The herbalist does not threaten people with bad consequences if they refuse to accept the argument. The doctors warn that the juice may be harmful, but that is a claim the herbalist attacks, not a threat the herbalist uses to force agreement.
- B
The claims do not contradict each other. The juice could improve coordination and also have harmful effects. Doctors could want control over medical treatments and also be right about those effects. Those possibilities expose the weakness in the argument; they do not make its premises inconsistent.
- CCorrect
The doctors say the juice may be harmful. Instead of answering that concern with information about the juice, the herbalist attacks the doctors' motives.
Even if the accusation about those motives is true, the safety question remains. We would need a reason to dismiss the warning itself. Saying that the people giving the warning are self-interested does not provide one.
- D
The evidence does not simply assume that there is no reason to avoid the juice. It gives claims about customers' coordination and doctors' motives, then draws that conclusion. Those claims do not justify the conclusion, but a bad connection between evidence and conclusion is not automatically circular reasoning.
- E
This resembles our first concern: improvement after taking the juice does not prove that the juice caused the improvement. But the herbalist's conclusion is not that the juice caused better coordination. The conclusion is that there is no reason not to try it.
The argument gets there by dismissing a warning about harm because of the doctors' alleged motives. C describes that move directly. Spotting a possible problem with the opening observation should not pull us away from the actual argument.
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