PrepTest 108, Section 2, Question 22
One can be at home and be in(49 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(23 more words not shown)
- AThe claim is(5 more words not shown)
- BThe claim represents(8 more words not shown)
- CThe claim is(9 more words not shown)
- DThe claim points(8 more words not shown)
- EThe claim inadvertently(3 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Picture yourself sitting in your backyard. You're at home, but you're not inside your house. Nothing mysterious there. The wording gets harder only when we let “home” and “house” blur together.
Now picture a house you own and rent to someone else. You visit to fix a sink. You're in your own house, but you're not at home: you live somewhere else. That second example establishes the conclusion. Being in a house you own doesn't require being at home.
The question sends us back to the first claim, about being at home without being inside the house. Be careful: that is the backyard example, not the rental example. They sound similar because they use the same words, but they run in different directions.
What we’re looking for
How does the backyard example relate to the conclusion? It doesn't conflict with it, but it doesn't establish it either. We could remove the backyard sentence and still use the rental property to prove the conclusion. Let's look for a description that respects that limited role.
Working the answers
- A
We don't need the backyard claim. The rental property gives us a complete example of being in one's own house without being at home. That alone establishes that being at home isn't required. A claim isn't required just because the author includes it.
- B
The author accepts the backyard claim. There is no attempt to show that you cannot be at home while sitting outside. What the conclusion rejects is a different idea: that whenever you're in a house you own, you must be at home. B confuses the two directions.
- CCorrect
The backyard claim can be true whether the conclusion is true or false. Let's make both possibilities concrete.
First, take the world the author describes. You can be at home in your backyard, and you can visit a house you own but rent to someone else. The backyard claim is true, and the rental property makes the conclusion true too: you can be in your own house without being at home.
Now imagine a world where everyone lives in the only house they own. In that world, being inside your own house would always mean being at home. The conclusion would be false. Yet you could still be at home in your backyard, outside the house. The first claim would remain true.
Knowing that you can be at home without being in your house therefore doesn't settle whether you can be in your own house without being at home. That's what “compatible with the truth or falsity” means here.
- D
The first claim distinguishes being at home from being inside a house. It doesn't give “at home” two competing meanings. Sitting in the backyard simply shows that being at home can include being outside the building. Two phrases referring to different things is not the same as one phrase being ambiguous.
- E
Both claims can be true, as the backyard and rental examples show. “You can be at home without being in your house” doesn't contradict “You can be in your own house without being at home.” Switching the order of the two ideas doesn't turn one possibility into a denial of the other.
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