Q14 - which one of

by **deedubbew** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:57 am

I can't seem to figure out why C won't work even though A does make some sense. Can someone please help

by **rinagoldfield** Mon Dec 09, 2013 7:32 pm

Thanks for your post, deedubbew!

This is a weaken question, so let’s start with the argument core. There are a bunch of premises. Here they are:

The new dean needs to be competent, respected, and from the university’s staff
The new dean needs to know computers to be competent
3. The new dean needs a doctorate to be respected

We can put these premises together, and deduce that the new dean will need meet three criteria:
1. S/he’ll know computers
2. S/he’ll have a doctorate
3. S/he’ll be from the university’s staff

The author concludes from these premises that the new dean will be a professor from the computer science department.

In forming this conclusion, the author assumes that the only people who meet the three criteria are computer science professors. But maybe that’s not true!

(A) suggests that the author’s assumption is not, in fact, true. It tells us that there are non-computer science professors who meet all three of the job’s criteria. (A) weakens by negating the author’s assumption.

(C) doesn’t weaken because it discusses people who are NOT qualified for the job. One of the qualifications is to be a member of the university’s staff, and these people don’t have that qualification. So whether or not such people apply for the job doesn’t weaken the author’s conclusion about who will get the job in the end.

(B) also discusses people who are NOT qualified for the job--those without doctoral degrees.

(D) discusses the board of trustees, and people without doctoral degrees. We don’t care about these people.

(E) is tempting, but it ultimately doesn’t weaken. It basically tells us that some members of the computer science faculty aren’t qualified for the job. But the conclusion suggests that all qualified applicants will be from the computer science department. Let’s say that there are 5 qualified applicants, and all 5 are from the computer science department. If there are 3 other non-qualified computer science professors, so what? This doesn’t hurt the conclusion. Eliminate (E).

Hope that helps!

by **WaltGrace1983** Mon Apr 28, 2014 2:02 pm

Just wanted to add how I broke this down. I just made a long conditional chain because sometimes its easier for me to understand the stimulus visually and it made going through the answers super easy. I think (B) could have been a lot more tempting had I not done it this way.

Dean =

What we see is that IF you are dean, you must have ALL of these qualifications: respect, PhD, Competent, Knowledge, and Staff. Without even one of these things, you simply cannot be the dean.

Now here is what the argument is assuming:

Dean =

â†’ Professor from University's C.S. department

In other words, the argument is assuming that ONLY Professors from the University's C.S. department are all of these things. To put it in even another way...

Respected & PhD & Competent & Really Knows & University Staff â†’ Professor University's C.S. Department

In order to weaken this, all we simply have to show is this...

~

We have to show that you CAN be all of those things (respected, PhD, etc.) and still NOT be a professor from the university's C.S. department. This is what (A) does. (A) shows that there are some members of the university staff who have PhDs and who really know about computers but are not professors. This one through me for a loop a bit because I was imagining the right answer would say that there is someone from a different department that has all those things (I undermined the importance of the professor condition in my mind) but this definitely still works!

***Note: I equate "doctoral degree" to PhD for shorthand. I am NOT trying to imply that ONLy PhDs are "doctoral degrees."

Q14 - which one of

Q14 - which one of

Re: Q14 - which one of

Re: Q14 - which one of