PrepTest 121, Section 4, Question 11
Psychiatrist: While the first appearance of a phobia(42 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the psychiatrist's(12 more words not shown)
- Atreats the cause(16 more words not shown)
- Bpresumes, without providing(15 more words not shown)
- Cbuilds the conclusion(8 more words not shown)
- Dtakes for granted(24 more words not shown)
- Ederives a causal(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Not every frightening experience creates a phobia. That doesn't mean frightening experiences never contribute to phobias.
Imagine two children having a bad encounter with a spider. One later develops a phobia; the other doesn't. We also know someone who fears spiders without having had a traumatic encounter. Those examples would show that the experience isn't guaranteed to produce a phobia and isn't the only possible route to one. They wouldn't rule it out as a contributor in the first child's case.
The psychiatrist treats those exceptions as if they eliminate the relationship altogether. Consider the same reasoning about gunshot wounds: some people survive being shot, and some people die without being shot. Would that show that gunshots don't contribute to deaths? Of course not. A cause need not produce its effect every time, and an effect can have more than one cause.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, look for that unreasonable demand: the author expects trauma and phobias to go together without exception before allowing that trauma can contribute at all.
Working the answers
- A
This would mean mixing up the direction of cause and effect—for example, treating a phobia as the cause of the earlier traumatic event. The psychiatrist doesn't do that. The argument denies that trauma contributes to phobias; it doesn't say phobias cause trauma.
- B
Rejecting this proposed contributor isn't the same as saying science can never establish any cause. The psychiatrist could believe that phobias have other, scientifically discoverable causes. B adds a sweeping claim about the limits of investigation that isn't part of the reasoning.
- C
The premises aren't just the conclusion repeated. They give facts about people with trauma but no phobia and people with phobias but no trauma. Those facts don't establish the conclusion, but they are different from the conclusion. Bad support isn't automatically an argument that assumes its own answer.
- DCorrect
“Invariably associated” means going together without exceptions. The psychiatrist assumes that trauma could contribute to phobias only if the two were always found together. But exceptions in both directions can coexist with trauma contributing in some cases. The argument rules out an unbroken relationship and treats that as ruling out any contribution.
- E
This describes establishing a causal connection merely because two things occur together. Our psychiatrist is doing the opposite: rejecting a causal contribution because the two things don't always occur together. The direction of the argument matters. E doesn't describe the mistake we need to identify.
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