PrepTest 117, Section 3, Question 10
To accommodate the personal automobile, houses are built(53 more words not shown)
The argument's reasoning is questionable(3 more words not shown)
- Ainfers from the(22 more words not shown)
- Binfers from the(23 more words not shown)
- Coverlooks the fact(18 more words not shown)
- Dtakes for granted(17 more words not shown)
- Etakes for granted(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Cars helped cities spread out. Were cars the only way that could have happened?
The passage gives us a picture of development shaped by driving: homes far from work and shopping centers with huge parking areas instead of woods. Let's accept that people built this way to accommodate personal automobiles. The question is what follows about a world in which people hadn't generally used those cars.
Maybe a large train network could have carried people from distant homes to workplaces and shopping centers. Bicycles or some other transportation arrangement might also have influenced where people lived. Those are possibilities, not a claim that a train system would necessarily produce exactly the same city layout. They show why identifying what actually shaped a city doesn't establish the only way such a layout could arise.
What we’re looking for
The author says the geography would have to be quite different without personal automobiles. That's the jump I'd challenge. For the flaw question, look for the assumption that the actual cause was required for the result. We'd need to rule out other routes to similar development before being that certain about the alternative history.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The author moves from cars having caused the present geography to treating cars as the only possible cause of that geography. But a result's actual history doesn't establish every way it could have come about. Another transportation arrangement might have produced similar features. The argument hasn't shown that removing cars necessarily removes the possibility of that layout.
- B
The conclusion remains about the geography of cities. It doesn't infer that cars also caused other features of modern life, such as how people communicate or spend their free time. B starts with the right causal idea but assigns the argument a conclusion it never reaches.
- C
Other inventions can affect people's lives without explaining how the same city geography could arise without cars. Electric lighting, for example, could change how people spend their evenings while leaving the layout question untouched. We need an alternative way to obtain the relevant result, not just a reminder that other technologies have effects of some kind.
- D
The argument doesn't assume shopping malls need no large parking lots despite people driving to them. It describes large lots as part of accommodating automobiles. D denies a need the author doesn't deny and misses the claim about what cities would be like without widespread personal-car use.
- E
Wanting to live without a car is different from asking what city geography would have developed if people hadn't generally used cars. The argument doesn't require people to prefer a car-free life. It makes a claim about the consequences of a different history, not about people's wishes.
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