PrepTest 159, Section 1, Question 2
Some have argued that using food crops to(56 more words not shown)
The argument proceeds(1 more words not shown)
- Aarguing that the(14 more words not shown)
- Bcountering the charge(20 more words not shown)
- Crebutting a charge(16 more words not shown)
- Drejecting the charge(15 more words not shown)
- Esupporting a moral(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Are we about to defend using food for fuel, or just argue that it isn't new? Those are different claims.
At first, the passage sounds like a moral debate. If crops could feed hungry people, diverting them might be hard to justify. But I'd want to know what would otherwise happen to those crops. Would they reach people who need food, or would they be wasted? That difference could matter to the moral question.
Then the author points out that we already divert crops from the human food supply to feed livestock. That doesn't settle morality either. Someone could object to both practices.
Look at the conclusion, though: using crops for fuel isn't a radical break with tradition. Now the livestock comparison makes sense. We already use crops for a purpose other than feeding them directly to humans; fuel is another use of that kind. The author is answering “Is this unprecedented?” without settling “Is this right?”
What we’re looking for
For the method question, describe that move: challenge the claim that a practice is radically new by comparing it with something we already do.
Working the answers
- A
Where does the author weigh good consequences against bad ones? We never get a calculation showing that benefits outweigh harms. The support is a comparison with an existing practice, and the conclusion concerns whether the new practice is a radical departure.
- B
The author doesn't deny that turning crops into fuel diverts them from the human food supply. Instead, the author points to another diversion we already accept as part of our practices. Showing that a consequence has a precedent isn't showing that it doesn't occur.
- CCorrect
The allegedly radical practice is using food crops for fuel. The existing practice is using those crops to feed livestock. By identifying the relevant similarity—diverting crops from direct human consumption—the author challenges the claim that the fuel use represents an unprecedented departure.
- D
This is the conclusion we might have expected before reaching the last sentence, but it isn't the one the author gives us. The passage does not establish that diverting crops is moral. Both the fuel practice and the livestock practice could be immoral while the comparison still showed that the fuel practice has a precedent.
- E
The author neither endorses the moral objection nor emphasizes a difference between the practices. The argument emphasizes their similarity to support a narrower conclusion: the diversion is not a radical break with tradition.
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