CHALLENGE: Explain Away an Argument Lapse
In these questions, you’ll find a stimulus exhibiting faulty reasoning, and you have to explain how it could be true. Essentially, you are supplying a premise to strengthen the overall argument.
- Which of the following, if true, explains the behavior of the lion mothers as described above?
- Each of the following could explain the statistical claim cited above, EXCEPT:
How to solve
- Read the argument and find the apparent discrepancy, lapse, or contradiction.
- State the apparent discrepancy, lapse, or contradiction in your own words.
- Use POE (the Process of Elimination). The best answer will explain how both sides of the paradox, discrepancy, or contradiction can be true. Eliminate answers that are out of scope.
- Common trap choices:
- Information that denies (doesn’t explain) the phenomenon that the question wants you to explain.
- Statements that explain something but are not specifically in reference to material in the stimulus.
