PrepTest 145, Section 2, Question 18
Historian: Those who claim that Shakespeare did not(55 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the historian's(12 more words not shown)
- Apresumes, without providing(16 more words not shown)
- Btakes for granted(16 more words not shown)
- Cfails to consider(18 more words not shown)
- Dfails to exclude(14 more words not shown)
- Emakes use of(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if these people have actual historical evidence? Different vocabulary across works, for example, might give someone a reason to investigate who wrote them. That wouldn't prove a different author wrote the plays, but it could be a genuine reason for raising the question.
The historian instead points to social status and family connections. Shakespeare was a glove maker's son; the proposed alternatives were aristocrats; many advocates are descendants of those aristocrats. Perhaps those connections create a motive for snobbery. They don't establish that snobbery is the only motive.
What we’re looking for
The word 'purely' does a lot of work. Before dismissing every other motive, we'd want to know what evidence these people actually offer. For the flaw question, look for the failure to consider that their doubts might be motivated by legitimate evidence as well.
Working the answers
- A
The conclusion concerns why people make a claim, not whether the claim is true. The historian concludes that the doubters are motivated purely by snobbery. A would describe an argument saying their claim must be false because they are snobs. That isn't the conclusion given here.
- B
If someone is motivated purely by snobbery, that already means no other motive is involved. The questionable step is establishing that their motives are purely snobbish in the first place. B treats the meaning of 'purely' as the problem, instead of identifying the unsupported exclusion of legitimate evidence.
- C
The argument concerns the motives of people who reject Shakespeare's authorship. It doesn't need an investigation of the opposing group's motives to avoid this particular flaw. We need to consider whether the doubters themselves might have real evidence, regardless of why other people defend Shakespeare.
- DCorrect
The historian hasn't ruled out legitimate evidence as a motive for doubting Shakespeare's authorship. Family pride and evidence could both influence a person. Even if the social connections suggest snobbery, they don't justify saying that nothing else motivates the doubts. The argument never examines the historical reasons these people might have.
- E
This describes reasoning that depends on an assumption one would accept only after already accepting the conclusion. Here, the stated facts concern occupations, aristocratic status, and ancestry. Someone could accept those facts without accepting the conclusion about pure snobbery. The problem is the unsupported leap from those facts to an exclusive motive, not an assumption that merely presupposes the conclusion.
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