PrepTest 112, Section 3, Question 13
While it was once believed that the sort(74 more words not shown)
The argument is vulnerable to(7 more words not shown)
- Athe organic conditions(12 more words not shown)
- Bthe symptoms of(12 more words not shown)
- Corganic illnesses that(11 more words not shown)
- Dthe nature of(16 more words not shown)
- Eorganic factors having(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A biological treatment doesn't prove that the environment played no part in the condition.
The terminology makes this passage look harder than the central move is. We're told that medication is the best treatment for the group called psychoses. Let's accept that claim for the question. It doesn't say medication is the only useful treatment, and it doesn't by itself tell us the complete story of how the condition developed. Could treatment have more than one useful component?
The conclusion goes further still: environmental factors have nothing to do with these conditions. Why rule them out? Imagine that a stressful home environment makes an existing problem worse. That is a possibility the argument would need to address, not a medical claim we're adding as fact. A biological component and an environmental influence could both be present.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, I'd look for that excluded possibility. Even granting a biological contribution, we shouldn't accept 'purely biological' just because a biological treatment works well.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Environmental factors could cause or worsen the organic conditions that lead to psychoses. That gives the environment a role even when a biological process is involved. The influences don't have to compete as two completely separate explanations; one could affect the other.
For example, an environmental condition could affect a biological process, and medication could then help with that process. The treatment's usefulness wouldn't erase the earlier environmental contribution. A identifies why the author hasn't established the claim that the environment has nothing to do with these conditions.
- B
Medicine helping a purely organic condition is compatible with the author's reasoning. It doesn't reveal an overlooked environmental role. We can accept that medicine sometimes works in those cases and still ask whether successful treatment establishes a purely organic cause in the cases discussed here.
- C
This concerns organic illnesses that aren't psychological. The conclusion concerns the causes of psychoses. Learning that some other kind of illness responds to a nonmedicinal treatment wouldn't directly identify the excluded environmental contribution to the conditions in this argument.
- D
This would support the general idea of drawing conclusions about a condition from a treatment that cures it. It wouldn't expose that approach as a mistake. We also aren't told the treatments here cure the conditions, only that they are best treated by medicinal means. D doesn't identify the possibility the author improperly rules out.
- E
This concerns organic contributions to neuroses, the category used as a contrast. The disputed inference is that psychoses have no environmental contribution. Showing an organic contribution in the other category doesn't establish an environmental contribution in this one. A addresses the conclusion's exclusion directly.
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