PrepTest 127, Section 3, Question 1
Anna: Did you know that rainbows always occur(81 more words not shown)
William's argument against Anna's claims(9 more words not shown)
- Ainappropriately distorts Anna's(10 more words not shown)
- Btakes for granted(14 more words not shown)
- Cillicitly infers that,(17 more words not shown)
- Daccepts the assertions(12 more words not shown)
- Eimplies that Pliny(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Anna's claim about where rainbows appear is interesting. I'm willing to hear it. When William says it cannot be correct, I want to know what is wrong with that account of rainbows.
Instead, William tells us about Pliny the Elder's other claims. Dog-headed people, eyes on people's shoulders, and snails as a headache cure certainly give us reasons to question Pliny's reliability. But could someone be wrong about those things and right about rainbows? Of course. Even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day. A record of mistakes doesn't make every statement a person makes false.
What we’re looking for
We do not have to establish that Pliny's rainbow claim is true. William is the one concluding that it must be wrong, and he has not connected the errors in these other claims to the claim about rainbows. For the flaw question, that is the jump to look for: he treats some incorrect assertions as a reason to reject this separate assertion.
Working the answers
- A
William doesn't change Anna's claim into a more extreme one. That would require something like responding as though she had said that leprechauns create rainbows, when she said nothing of the kind. He rejects the claim she actually presents; the problem is his reason for rejecting it.
- B
Bad faith would mean Pliny knowingly misrepresented what he believed. William need not assume that. Pliny could have sincerely believed the claims about unusual creatures and still have been mistaken. Whether those mistakes were honest doesn't justify concluding that his rainbow claim is false.
- CCorrect
The incorrect assertions concern unusual creatures and a supposed headache cure. The conclusion rejects the assertion about rainbows. This answer captures the unsupported move from errors in some claims to an error in this one. Someone who makes mistakes can still get another subject right.
- D
William rejects the ancient scholar's assertion. He doesn't accept it without checking it. This answer describes the opposite response to the claim from the one we are evaluating.
- E
The age of Pliny's writings isn't William's reason for rejecting the rainbow claim. His reason is that Pliny made other incorrect assertions. Nor does William say that the writings have no value of any kind; even inaccurate writings might have historical or entertainment value. E changes both the reason and the scope of his objection.
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