PrepTest 103, Section 1, Question 21
Not all tenured faculty are full professors.(30 more words not shown)
The flawed pattern of reasoning(17 more words not shown)
- AAlthough all modern(26 more words not shown)
- BAll municipal hospital(22 more words not shown)
- CAlthough some buildings(24 more words not shown)
- DNot all public(29 more words not shown)
- EAlthough some cathedrals(22 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe all the exceptions work in other departments.
We're told that some tenured faculty aren't full professors. That gives us exceptions somewhere among the tenured faculty. It doesn't place any of them in linguistics. Every person in linguistics could have tenure and be a full professor while the tenured people who aren't full professors all work elsewhere.
So accepting both premises doesn't require accepting the conclusion. The mistake is carrying exceptions from the larger group into a particular smaller group without establishing that any exceptions belong there.
For the parallel, keep three descriptions straight: tenured faculty are the larger group, linguistics faculty are a group entirely within it, and full professors have the characteristic some members of the larger group lack. We need an answer that assumes the smaller group must also contain someone lacking that characteristic.
What we’re looking for
If the wording gets tangled, return to those actual descriptions. The order of the premises can change. What matters is which group contains which and where the argument places the exceptions.
Working the answers
- A
This conclusion follows. Some office buildings aren't climate-controlled, while every modern office tower is climate-controlled. Those buildings without climate control therefore can't be modern office towers. A uses a known difference to exclude some buildings from a group. It doesn't take exceptions in a larger group and insist that they also occur within a specified smaller group, as the linguistics argument does.
- B
The nonforbidding municipal hospitals are already identified within the hospital group. Since all those hospitals are massive, those particular hospitals demonstrate that a building can be massive without looking forbidding. The conclusion follows. The original lacks that connection: it never identifies any non-full-professor exceptions within linguistics.
- CCorrect
Buildings designed by famous architects match tenured faculty. Government buildings match linguistics faculty. Being well proportioned matches being a full professor.
Some buildings in the larger famous-architect group aren't well proportioned, but why must any government buildings be among them? All the poorly proportioned examples could be nongovernment buildings, while every government building is well proportioned. That is exactly how the original's tenured exceptions could all be outside linguistics. C puts the same exception into a smaller group without support.
- D
Some poorly designed public buildings were originally intended for private use. D then expands that claim to all poorly designed public buildings. That's an unsupported move from some to all within the same group. The original instead takes a fact about some members of a larger group and assigns it to a particular subgroup. The problem isn't simply that both arguments mention poorly fitting examples; the move between groups must match.
- E
The cathedrals that aren't stone are still cathedrals, and every cathedral is impressive. Those examples therefore establish that a building can be impressive without being stone. Like B, E carries a property to examples we already know belong to the relevant group. It doesn't assume an unidentified exception must occur in a subgroup.
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