Q26 - If Blankenship Enterprises has

[geverett]

I recognized this as a conditional logic flaw - mistaken reversal, but answer choices B and D threw me as they used some interesting language.

If someone could really breakdown the language in B that would be awesome, because I am having a hard time understanding how it describes a mistaken reversal flaw.

As far as D I can see how a mistaken reversal is not necessarily a "universal" conclusion.

[jiyoonsim]

Fortunately this question's stem is relatively easy to put in a logic map way. The stem basically says

Switch suppliers -> ~profit
---------
~profit -> switch suppliers

You are right on D. D is wrong because there is no universal conclusion. The stem makes a conclusion only on a certain company (Blankenship Enterprise).

B is our answer, and they put it in a really wordy way. I think it helps to understand the wording in this way. Think the first "condition" as "switch suppliers" of the above map. The first "phenomenon said to occur" is "~profit."

I think it will be even more helpful if you get the stem's assumption. The author assumes the ONLY way leading to the zero profit is switching suppliers. But it's not true. There are many things that can cause zero profit, such as stock market crashing, unexpected natural disaster, robbed, etc. But the author throw all of these out of window.

[ttunden]

why isnt this A? all i see in the stim is : if change occurs company will make no profit, then it basically restates same conditions next sentence. isnt this the definition of circular argument? does the reverse of the statement completely destroy the option of it being a circular argument?

[justindebouvier7]

This certainly isn't a circular argument. An example of a circular argument would be something that says like "My dog is the best dog in the world because he is better than all the other dogs."

This type of argument leads you absolutely nowhere. The premise nearly has the same point as the conclusion.

If you would like a specific example of circular linearity in a given problem you can check out Preptest 24 Section 2 Q8.

However, this argument is under different conditions, sufficient and necessary, than it was given under the previous conditions. It looks like you have spotted that it was the reverse, you just have to put that into an answer choice and that is B.

We are given that if they switch suppliers, then it will result in no profit for that year. Then the conclusion states that if the company doesn't show a profit for that year, then it must be true that they switch suppliers.
Premise: SS--> ~P
Conclusion: ~P-->SS

This is incorrect to suggest that because there could have been numerous other reasons why the company didn't show a profit that year. It could have switched the infrastructure of the company resulting in lost profits. Most commonly the answer choices will say something along the lines of mistakes a necessary condition for a sufficient one but in this problem set, you just have to be aware of what the flaw in the argument actually is and that will lead you to the correct answer choice.

[YANQINGJ738]

Why the answer is not E? I thought the reasoning is wrong because there can be other causes to profit decrease except for supplier switch. Thank you.

[andrewgong01]

Why the answer is not E? I thought the reasoning is wrong because there can be other causes to profit decrease except for supplier switch. Thank you.

It is not "E" because "E" is not engaging with the structure (i.e. reasoning) of the argument .

The argument is reasoned by reversing a conditional relationship and is not reasoned through causality. "E" would be valid in this case ( I think) had the argument not used conditional statements in its premise to arrive at the conclusion. This is because we take the premise to be true where we know that IF suppliers are switched then no profits are realized. We take it as a fact that this relation holds.
Now had the argument then concluded that Therefore suppliers switch cause no profits to be realized then E could be a valid answer because now it leaves open the possibility that there could be a third factor that caused both. For example, maybe there is a strong correlation between profits and suppliers switch but there is no causal relation between the two; rather, it could be a third hidden force . For example, maybe a recession causes both a supplier switch (e.g. recession leads to cost cutting and finding a cheaper suppler) and it also causes lower profits (e.g. people spend less); hence there is a correlation but no causation.

BUT, this is not how the argument is structured.

The argument concludes that if we see no profit then we know there was a supplier switch. It is true that there could be a third cause but that is not the primary flaw of the argument. The primary flaw is an illegal reversal because the argument makes a conclusion not of causality but of saying if the premise's nesscary condition is triggered, we know the sufficient condition is triggered, which is what the credited reponse describes. In other words, the arugment assumes an "if and only if " relationship and only if we assume an "if only if" relation would the argument's conclusion be tenable. Also, it is also because the premise and the conclusion is a reversal of each other that we can eliminate "A" because it is no longer the same as they are reversed statements of each other but an attractive wrong answer.

Other Choices :
"C" --> Rarely the correct answer choice on flaws (word shift). Profit is not used differently here and profit is probably pretty hard to equivocate unless it is some nuanced esoteric corporate finance passage where there are different ways to measure profit
"D" --> Not an universal conclusion; the conclusion is still on the specific enterprise and not companies in general. Moreover, we do not if this was an EXCEPTIONAL ISOLATED case (i.e. the degree is concerning here)