Q13 - If the play were successful

[richard.j.won]

Hi,

A little help here please. The argument states that if the play were successful, it would be adapted into a movie or revived at the decade festival. But it's not successful, so it concludes that the play will neither become a movie nor be revived at the festival.

If we diagram this:

1. PS (Successful Play) ---> AM (Adapted movie) or RDF (Revived decade festival)

Contrapositive= -AM + -RDF ---> -PS

But the conclusion is saying a mistaken reversal of the contrapositive:

-PS --> -AM + -RDF.

I boiled it down to choices A and E, but had a hard time understanding what the answer choices were saying and ended up choosing A (wrong answer).

Can someone help please clarify?

Thanks.

[bbirdwell]

If we diagram this:

1. PS (Successful Play) ---> AM (Adapted movie) or RDF (Revived decade festival)

Contrapositive= -AM + -RDF ---> -PS

But the conclusion is saying a mistaken reversal of the contrapositive:

-PS --> -AM + -RDF.

Totally. Now we just have to navigate the answer choice language to find a match. We know what the flaw is, and can predict that it will likely be called a necessary/sufficient error, a causal error, or something along those lines.

For (A), we need only check out the first half: "fails to draw conclusion X." Which conclusion should the argument have drawn? None! Given the fact that the play is not successful, we can conclude nothing, as you proved above. Therefore this choice is not a match.

(B) is way out of scope

(C) is not even close.

(D) is not a match -- success is defined as one of these two venues, beyond those two is irrelevant to this argument.

(E) is really confusing to read. It could be translated as:
"fails to consider that there might be another way, other than success, for the play to be adapted or revived."
or
"assumes that success is the only way the play can be adapted or revived."
or
"mixes up sufficient and necessary conditions."

More specifically, match the individual parts of (E) to the argument. "the play's not satisfying one sufficient condition" = "the play is not successful," because success is the given sufficient condition, and we know the play is not successful. Therefore, the sufficient condition has not been met. So far so good.
"Does not preclude its satisfying a different sufficient condition" = "there might be another sufficient condition (ie another means of being adapted or revived)." True. This another way of saying "mistakes a sufficient condition for a necessary one." It's a match!

Hope that helps!

[geverett]

I got this one right, but I am confused about what A is saying. Is A trying to say that the conclusion would be more valid if it considered that: "The play will not be adapted as a movie, but will be revived at the Decade festival" or is it saying the conclusion is invalid because it fails to consider that "The play will not be adapted as a motive and it will not be revived at the Decade festival."

What is A really saying?

[bbirdwell]

I read (A) as saying that the conclusion IS "the play will be neither adapted nor revised," and that it SHOULD BE simply, "the play will not do BOTH (and thus might do one or the other)."

Here's the key distinction:

Do neither = ~A AND ~B

Not do both = ~AB

[geverett]

Yea A is just as bad as the original conclusion. We can't know that it will do only one and we can't know that it will do neither just from negating the sufficient condition.

Thanks Brian!

[shirando21]

In D, what does "no further avenues" mean?

I understood where the flaw is, the argument ignores there's another possibility or other possibilites that will lead the play to be adapted as a movie or revived at the Decade Festival, but I did not pick the right description.

[ptewarie]

no further avenues means " nothing else".

In most LR problems, it will help to quickly identify the premise and the conclusion. Most of the time there is a error/gap of some sort. This can be usually filled by an unstated assumption.

In this case:

Premise: IF play successful--> ADAPTED or REVIVED
Conclusion: Not Successful-> not Adapted or Revived.

This is a classic reversal.
The conclusion basically assumes that

Adapted and Revived Only if Successful( contrapositive) although the stimulus only allows us to infer that if NOT Adapted and NOT revived than NOT successful(contrapositive).

Answer choice D says that there is a premsumption(unstated assumption) that the conclusion contrapositive is the ONLY option