Q18 - Philosopher: Scientists talk about the

[alana.canfield]

I had a lot of difficult with this question. My first concern is why is B correct? In the logic games, and in general, I thought when a claim is made like "X are Y" it means all X are Y. But here, it appears they are saying in answer choice B that "scientists do Y" means only a few individual scientists do Y.

The only other option I can think of is that maybe they consider it an assumption that the combined parts of the community equals the whole of the community. Although this seems hard to believe.

My second question is about why the answer I chose is wrong. I chose D. I think it is wrong because the word "illicitly" implies "illegal" and using a word any way you want isn't illegal.

Any advice/thoughts are appreciated.

[giladedelman]

Great question!

Your suspicion, the one that you find hard to believe, is actually correct. Let's see if we can figure out why.

We're told that scientists are self-interested, and that most of them accordingly direct their activities toward their own personal career enhancement and only incidentally toward the pursuit of truth. From this, the argument concludes that the scientific community is mostly focused on its collective enhancement and only incidentally on the pursuit of truth.

most scientists focused on personal gain --> scientific community mostly focused on collective gain

The issue here is not whether "most" equals "all." The premise and conclusion very explicitly refer to "most scientists" and what the activities of the scientific community are "largely directed to," respectively.

The issue is this: is what's true of the individual members of a group also true of the group as a whole?

For example, what if I said, The goal of each NFL team is to score more points than its opponents. Therefore, the goal of the NFL as a whole is to score more points than its opponents.

That seems pretty obviously absurd. The NFL's mission statement is probably not to put up more points than the NBA, or whatever.

So we have the same problem in this argument. We can't assume that a group as a whole has the same goal as its individual members. That's why (B) is correct.

(D) is incorrect, not because of the word "illicitly" -- that just means unjustifiably -- but because there is no ambiguity here in the use of the term "self-interested." It very clearly refers to an interest in one's personal gain.

(A) is out because the argument never infers that every scientist has a particular characteristic.

(C) is actually the opposite of what the argument does: the argument says that the pursuit of career enhancement does incidentally advance the pursuit of truth.

(E) is incorrect because the argument is in no way concerned with cause and effect.

Does that clear this one up for you?

[alana.canfield]

Thank you very much for the reply. It is now crystal clear.

[geverett]

Great analogy!

[WaltGrace1983]

So the word "accordingly" is actually introducing an intermediate conclusion here?

I got this wrong (chose A instead of B) because are I thought the conclusion was that "scientists...are self-interested"

[ohthatpatrick]

Yes, "accordingly" could be swapped out with "because of this" with little change in meaning.

I see how if you got confused thinking that "accordingly" provided a supporting idea (rather than relying on a supporting idea) that you would like (A). It deals with the connection between the first sentence and the second.

But I'm wondering how you were making peace with ignoring the third sentence, when it starts with the word 'Hence'.

I guess you thought the overall line of reasoning was
2nd sent --> 3rd sent --> 1st sent ??

I can see how you would get there, structurally, if you thought that "accordingly" meant something like "after all".

But if you think about the meaning of that argument's points of support, it's pretty confusing:

Scientists are self interested.
Why?
Because the scientific community is largely self interested.
Why?
Because the professional activities of most scientists are self interested.

It's not great, but not terrible. Since Whole to Part and Part to Whole are both illegal moves, it's makes just as much sense (not much) to go from Whole to Part as it does to go from Part to Whole. So you're pretty much stuck with keywords to identify which is the Prem and which is the Conc.

[uhdang]

A question came up while going through this question, so any help would be appreciated.

First of all, let's go through the question.
Here is the core:

Scientists pursue truth but they are self-interested.
==>
most scientists’ activities are directed to personal career enhancement and only incidentally toward the pursuit of truth
==>
activities of scientific community are directed toward enhancing the status of that community as a whole and only incidentally toward the pursuit of truth.

@ Two gaps were spotted.
1) The author assumes that career enhancement and pursuit of truth as a different job for scientists. What if pursuing the truth IS the career enhancement? We need to make an assumption here that pursuit of truth has no overlapping part with a personal career enhancement. Just to verify, negating of this -- pursuit of truth is a personal career enhancement -- destroys the argument.

2) Another assumption, or rather a flaw, is that the author treats scientists and a scientific community as the same. However, scientific community could include more than scientists such as journalists for scientific magazine, graduate students, etc. This is considered a flaw to apply individual quality to the group.

And here is my question: There is an obvious gap here, but can we consider this as an assumption, not a flaw? Is this a logical gap or a flaw, or both? Or rather the author's assumption does exist but it is a flaw? I feel like the last is the right reasoning, but I want to clarify it.

Now, let's get into answer choices

a) The author infers the scientific community to have the same quality as MOST scientists according to the stimulus. Wrong connection made.

b) Exactly what has been pointed out above. It is illegitimate to equalize individual scientists to a scientific community. Error of applying individual quality to the group.

c) This answer choice focuses on the first assumption I have pointed out. Since the stimulus treats pursuing personal career enhancement and pursuing the truth as separate activities in the conclusion, negating this answer choice, "the aims of personal career enhancement sometimes advances the pursuit of truth" would hurt the argument. Of course, this would just be an assumption, but not a flaw.

d) There is no ambiguity in the term, “self-interested.” We all know what it indicates.

e) Cause and effect has been aligned properly. Self-interested quality leads scientists mainly to focus on career enhancement and incidentally on pursuing the truth.

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice breakdown!

Assumptions = flaws.

Arguments are either AIRTIGHT or FLAWED. They either contain NO ASSUMPTIONS or they DO.

A lot of students equate the word "assumption" with "missing link" or "logic gap". But that's just one form of an assumption.

When you're evaluating arguments, you're looking for
- Missing Links (language math)
- Potential Objections (shades of gray type ideas that you would use if you were debating the conclusion)

Consider this argument:
Ryan is crying. Thus, he must be cutting onions.

A lot of students might say, this is ASSUMING "cutting onions can make you cry", but the FLAW is "there might be some other reason Ryan is crying".

In reality, both of those ideas are ASSUMPTIONS/FLAWS.

You want to think to yourself,
MISSING LINK ... cutting onions = crying
POTENTIAL OBJECTIONS ... what if Ryan is watching a sad movie? what if his dog just died?

The author ASSUMES that "cutting onions makes you cry".
The author also ASSUMES that "Ryan is NOT watching a sad movie", "Ryan's dog did NOT just die", etc.

ASSUMPTIONS = -1 (OBJECTIONS)

Whenever you hear an assumption, you can turn it into an objection by negating it. Whenever you hear an objection, you can turn it into an assumption, by ruling it out.

When Flaw questions use the phrases "takes for granted" / "presumes w/o providing justification", they're just literally saying "the argument is flawed because the author ASSUMED ______ ".

So the gaps you broke down were all valid. They COULD have tested that first gap you mentioned between the potential overlap of self-interest and pursuit of truth.

The arguments in a Flaw question can contain multiple assumptions or be vulnerable to many objections. We have to stay flexible.

We could see a correct answer that says
(A) takes for granted that cutting onions can make you cry
or one that says
(B) fails to consider that Ryan's dog may have just died

Hope this helps.

[uhdang]

Your demonstration with "Onion" example REALLY helped me understand how Assumptions = Flaw.

Thank you very much.

[ganbayou]

Although something for most individual is true, that does not mean it is true for the whole...why this can be true? Could you give me an example?
I thought if "most" individual who consist of the whole group are X, that will lead the whole group will tend to be X...like democracy.
If it says "some" or just "scientists" I can understand why individuals would not affect the whole.

Or is it because even thought they have different ideas individually, they can change their ideas when they act as a group?

Thank you

[uhdang]

Although something for most individual is true, that does not mean it is true for the whole...why this can be true? Could you give me an example?
I thought if "most" individual who consist of the whole group are X, that will lead the whole group will tend to be X...like democracy.
If it says "some" or just "scientists" I can understand why individuals would not affect the whole.

Or is it because even thought they have different ideas individually, they can change their ideas when they act as a group?

Thank you

Okay, I don't know if I understood your question right, but I'll give it a shot on this.

"although something for most individual is true, that does not mean it is true for the whole... why this can be true?"

This is your main question.

When we say something is true for the whole it means that every single one of the consisting parties, or individuals, possess certain characteristics. For example, when we say that, "grade 9 students in St.Vincent high school are, as a whole, all taller than 6 feet", it means EVERY SINGLE ONE of grade 9 in St.Vincent high is taller than 6 feet. However, if we say that, "MOST grade 9 students in St.Vincent high are taller than 6 feet", this means that more than half and maybe close to every single one of grade 9 students in St.Vincent high are taller than 6 feet BUT NOT ALL of them.

Essentially, every single one of elements that compose of a group MUST possess the same quality that we are referring to in order to say, "something is true for the whole" whereas there are some, or at least one, that does not possess the same quality among elements when we say that "something is true for most."

Let me know if it clears out your question.

[ganbayou]

Thanks, I got it. If "the whole" refers to every individual belongs to the group, that makes a sense

[nieyuhan-123]

I got this one wrong and I was hesitate between A and B, I eliminated B cause I was thinking "individual scientists", can we refer "most scientists" as "individual scientists" ?? I think I am confused with the concept of "each and every" with "a whole" too...

Can anyone help me with this ? Thank you sooooo much ! I am a little helpless with Logical reasoning since English is my second language. But I'll try my best anyway.

[roflcoptersoisoi]

The professional activities of most scientists are directed towards professional career enhancement and only incidentally towards the pursuit of truth.

The professional activities of the entire scientific community is largely directed towards enhancing the status of the community as a whole and only incidentally towards the pursuit of truth.

Flaw: Cookie cutter flaw, uses faulty extrapolation, presumes what is true for some members of the community is true for the community as a whole.

(A) Descriptively inaccurate. The philosopher doesn't extrapolate what is true about most scientists to each individual scientist, but rather to the scientific community as a whole.
(B) Bingo. The argument presumes that because most scientists have a characteristic the the scientific community as a whole does as well.
(C) Descriptively inaccurate, the Philosopher concedes that the professional activities can be directed if only incidentally towards the pursuit of truth.
(D) Descriptively inaccurate. The philosopher doesn't equivocate when using the term "Self-interested".
(E) Descriptively inaccurate, the author infers an effect from a presume cause, not the other way around as suggested by this answer choice.