PrepTest 140, Section 3, Question 20
Taylor: From observing close friends and relatives, it(39 more words not shown)
Taylor's reasoning is most vulnerable(7 more words not shown)
- Ais based on(9 more words not shown)
- Bfails to address(12 more words not shown)
- Crelies crucially on(5 more words not shown)
- Dpresumes, without providing(13 more words not shown)
- Eappeals to a(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Or maybe you know your friend really well.
A change in someone's voice, a familiar facial expression, or a reaction you've seen many times could help you work out what that person is thinking. Spending years with a friend or relative can give you ordinary clues that a stranger might miss. You don't have to read minds to read someone well.
Taylor takes the frequency of these accurate judgments as evidence of telepathy. But even if the judgments happen too often to be mere coincidence, that doesn't leave telepathy as the only explanation. Familiarity and subtle cues provide another possibility.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, I'd describe the missing alternative. We can accept that friends and relatives often know what someone thinks or feels while rejecting the leap to a psychic explanation. The observation and Taylor's proposed cause are separate claims.
Working the answers
- A
We aren't told enough about the number of observations to identify a sample-size problem. More importantly, a very large collection of accurate judgments by friends could still be explained by familiarity. Expanding the sample wouldn't by itself bridge the gap to telepathy.
- BCorrect
An ordinary explanation is available: people learn to recognize the cues and habits of those they know well. That could account for the observed successes without psychic communication. Taylor doesn't address that possibility before treating the pattern as evidence for telepathy. We don't need to prove the alternative explains every case to see that the argument hasn't ruled it out.
- C
Discussing people's feelings isn't an appeal to the reader's emotions. Taylor points to a claimed pattern of accurate judgments and offers an explanation for it. The problem is the unsupported explanation, not an attempt to make us accept it through pity, fear, or some other emotional pressure.
- D
Taylor says close friends and relatives often understand one another. That doesn't require believing strangers can never know what someone is thinking. A stranger could sometimes read a clear expression correctly while Taylor's observation about close relationships remained true.
- E
We could accept the premise that friends often know what one another thinks while denying telepathy entirely. That is exactly what the familiarity explanation allows. So accepting the premise doesn't already require accepting the conclusion; the mistake is failing to consider another explanation for the premise.
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