PrepTest 126, Section 3, Question 23
Essayist: Computers have the capacity to represent and(25 more words not shown)
The flawed pattern of reasoning(18 more words not shown)
- AOften individual animals(45 more words not shown)
- BIn the plastic(45 more words not shown)
- CIn any organism,(34 more words not shown)
- DSome vitamins require(51 more words not shown)
- EFriendship often involves(40 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Sharing a capability doesn't automatically put two things in the same category.
The essayist tells us that computers can represent information and perform logical transformations on it. The human mind can do those things too. Fine. But is having those abilities enough to be a computer? The premise tells us something computers can do; it doesn't establish that everything capable of doing it is a computer.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel-flaw question, identify three roles. We have a category, a feature of that category, and another thing with the same feature. The mistake is using the shared feature to put that other thing into the category. We want that mistaken classification, not just any comparison of two similar things.
Working the answers
- A
This uses similar sacrificial behavior in animals and humans to suggest a biological explanation for the human behavior. It doesn't classify the human community as a type of animal because the two share a feature. The conclusion concerns a probable cause, not membership in a category.
- B
The beginning is close: the plastic arts have a characteristic, and poetry has it too. But the conclusion correctly says that this shared characteristic can't distinguish the plastic arts from other arts. To match the essayist's mistake, the answer would need to conclude that poetry is therefore a plastic art. It doesn't do that.
- CCorrect
Organisms are the category, corresponding to computers. Interdependence of components is the shared feature, corresponding to the ability to represent and transform information. Communities are the other thing, corresponding to the human mind.
The answer says communities have that interdependence and therefore belong to the category of organisms. That's the same unsupported classification. Knowing that organisms have interdependent components doesn't establish that everything with interdependent components is an organism. The conclusion appears earlier in the second sentence than the supporting fact, but the relationship between the ideas is the same.
- D
Selenium is described as something vitamin E needs to be fully active, and the conclusion concerns the disease risk associated with lacking it. There is no move from a shared property to classifying selenium as a vitamin, or vitamin E as a mineral. This is reasoning about a required contributor and the effects of its absence, not our category mistake.
- E
Friendship and other forms of cooperation share potentially burdensome obligations. The conclusion says cooperation, like friendship, can require putting other goals ahead of self-interest. It doesn't conclude that those other forms of cooperation must be friendship. In fact, the answer explicitly distinguishes them from friendship. The shared feature remains a similarity, not a basis for misclassification.
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