Q16 - Editorial: Cell-phone usage on buses

[jennifer]

Can someone please translate the wording of answer choice D and give me an easy to understand example, I have never seen this answer choice before...thank you

[americano1990]

Essentially its referring to a subsidiary/intermediate conclusion.

Why? Because intermediate conclusion is a conclusion that is supported by a premise and which is in turn used to support the MAIN BIG conclusion.

For example.
Main conclusion: Going to law school is hard

intermediate conclusion: LSAT (is needed) is difficult
Premise: LSAT tests you on difficult logic and games.

Premise tells you why LSAT is difficult, and the difficulty of LSAT explains why going to law school is hard.

Get it?

[tzyc]

I thought the part in question is a premise which supports the part "this suggests that recent...ill-adviced", which I thought is the conclusion.
If it is a intermidiate conclusion, the premise would be the last sentence right?
What does "Airline passengers are...tightly" play?
If this is another premise which supports the intermidiate conclusion, how is "tightly" related??

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

You are correct: the statement in question is a premise for the "ill-advised" sentence, which is the main conclusion.

But, as the previous poster was saying, there is such a thing as an "intermediate/subsidiary" conclusion.

We'll call it IC for short.

You could call an IC a premise, because it DOES provide support for the main conclusion.

But it's also appropriate to call an IC a conclusion, because it has its own supporting idea.

When arguments have an IC, you think of the structure like this:

Main Conc:
Getting to law school is hard
(why?)

Intermed. Conc:
(because ...) Getting a good LSAT score is very difficult.
(why?)

Premise:
(because ...) The LSAT is full of challenging vocabulary and strange logic games.

So the structure of this argument goes like:

Main Conc:
Allowing cell phones on planes would be ill-advised
(why?)

Intermed. Conc:
(because ...) Cell-phones on planes would be even more upsetting than cell-phones on trains or buses.
(why?)

Premise:
(because ...) Planes are packed more tightly than trains or buses, so you can't move around if some cell-phone user nearby is annoying you.

So if you re-read (D), it is just showing this structure:
Prem --> Intermed. Conc --> Conc

The statement in question is an Intermediate conclusion; there is a premise that supports the IC, and the IC supports the Main Conclusion.

== other answers ==
(A) The main conclusion is the 2nd sentence
(B) This claim supports the main conclusion, so the argument is NOT trying to rebut (or go against) it.
(C) This claim DIRECTLY supports the main conclusion, and it does NOT support some other premise. (Some other premise supports IT)
(E) This is not neutral information; it supports the main conclusion.

Hope this helps.

[mistermj2016]

I had such questions too, when was inexperienced. You need some services, like Android emulators, to work with programm on pc
http://android-emulator.net/en/