PrepTest 104, Section 4, Question 21
Words like "employee," "payee," and "detainee" support the(102 more words not shown)
The argument does which one(10 more words not shown)
- Aprovides additional support(22 more words not shown)
- Bdismisses the counterexample(16 more words not shown)
- Cconcedes that the(20 more words not shown)
- Dnarrows the scope(17 more words not shown)
- Eshows how replacing(27 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
An employee is employed by someone. A payee is paid by someone. But who is “absenting” the absentee?
That last word exposes the problem with the original rule. An absentee can be the person who stays away, not someone receiving an action from another person. My first reaction is that language can have exceptions. But the author does more than shrug and accept an odd word.
The author changes the rule. It now applies when there are two parties: one acts, and the word ending in -ee identifies the party receiving that action. An absentee acting on their own falls outside that narrower condition.
What we’re looking for
For the question about how the author handles the counterexample, I'd say: acknowledge the difficulty, then revise the rule so it no longer covers that case. We don't have to prove that no other word could ever challenge the revised rule. We just need to describe how this particular challenge is handled.
Working the answers
- A
This would mean the original rule was fine and the apparent exception resulted from misunderstanding “absentee.” For example, the author might have claimed that another person really does perform the relevant action on the absentee. But the passage doesn't reinterpret the word that way. It changes the rule by adding the two-party condition.
- B
The author doesn't weigh three supporting examples against one exception and decide the exception is too insignificant to matter. The counterexample prompts a change in the rule. That is a response to its force, not a dismissal based on the amount of evidence on each side.
- C
The first part fits: “absentee” is recognized as a problem for the original generalization. The rest does not. The author doesn't preserve that generalization unchanged by saying all rules have exceptions. Instead, the new version covers a smaller set of cases. Accepting an exception while keeping the same rule is different from revising the rule's scope.
- DCorrect
The initial generalization concerns words ending in -ee. The revised one applies only when such a word identifies a party in a two-party transaction. That added condition narrows its scope.
The absentee example no longer challenges the revised claim because the person can be acting on their own. “Putative counterexample” simply means the supposed counterexample; the key is that the author limits the rule rather than arguing that the example was misread.
- E
The important change is the added condition about two parties, not merely replacing “affected” with “having an action directed at oneself.” The author doesn't show that the absentee example was false or misleading after all. The example reveals a limitation in the original statement, and the author adjusts the statement to accommodate it.
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