PrepTest 120, Section 3, Question 21
Clearly, fitness consultants who smoke cigarettes cannot help(38 more words not shown)
The conclusion follows logically if(7 more words not shown)
- AAnyone who does(13 more words not shown)
- BAnyone who cares(10 more words not shown)
- CAnyone who does(12 more words not shown)
- DAnyone who does(8 more words not shown)
- EAnyone who cares(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Someone can give good advice without following all of it personally. I can imagine a fitness consultant who knows how to help a client exercise, yet smokes. Or someone who cares about health, exercises, and eats carefully but struggles with that one habit. The behavior doesn't automatically establish complete indifference to health.
The argument gives us a chain about caring: a consultant who doesn't care about personal health doesn't care about clients' health, and a consultant who doesn't care about clients' health can't help them become healthier. For this task, accept those stated links. Where do the smokers enter that chain? The author never says smoking means not caring about one's own health.
What we’re looking for
We're asked to make the conclusion follow. That's the missing connection I'd look for: smokers don't care about their own health. With that added, we could move from smoking through the stated chain to being unable to help clients.
Working the answers
- A
This condenses the chain we already have: not caring about personal health leads to being unable to help others. But we still don't know that the smoking consultants meet its starting condition. The imagined consultant who smokes but cares about health remains an unanswered possibility.
- B
This tells us what people who care about others' health can accomplish. It doesn't establish whether these smoking consultants care, and it doesn't connect smoking to an inability to help. An ability rule for people who care won't establish that smokers fall outside that group.
- C
This closely repeats the final link concerning lack of concern for others and inability to help them. Repeating or extending that link doesn't supply the missing entry point. We still need to establish something about these consultants from the fact that they smoke.
- D
The rule applies to people who do not smoke. Our consultants do smoke, so it doesn't tell us whether they care about others' health. Nonsmokers could all care while some smokers cared too. The problem isn't that clients are excluded from “others”; clients certainly can be others. It's that this rule gives us no conclusion about smokers.
- ECorrect
Anyone who cares about personal health does not smoke. So a consultant who smokes cannot belong to that group of people who care: if the consultant did care, E says the consultant wouldn't smoke.
Now follow the chain. Smoking rules out caring about personal health; the first stated rule then rules out caring about clients' health; the second rules out helping those clients become healthier. E supplies precisely the missing link, whether or not we would endorse such a sweeping claim outside this argument.
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