Food Critic: Chef Moreno's new signature dish, the Autumn Harvest Stew, is made entirely of ingredients that are incredibly spicy when eaten alone, such as ghost peppers and raw garlic. Therefore, the stew as a whole must be incredibly spicy.
Which one of the following most accurately describes a flaw in the food critic's reasoning?
- It presumes, without providing justification, that a whole has a certain property merely because all of its constituent parts have that property.Answer
- BIt takes for granted that containing spicy ingredients is the only way for a stew to be considered spicy.
- CIt relies on a shift in the meaning of the word 'spicy' between the premise and the conclusion.
- DIt confuses a subsidiary conclusion about the ingredients with the main conclusion about the overall dish.
- EIt concludes that the stew is spicy based purely on the absolute number of spicy ingredients rather than their proportional representation.
Answer
The option stating that it presumes a whole has a certain property merely because all of its constituent parts have that property.
The argument commits the Fallacy of Composition. Just because the individual ingredients are spicy on their own does not logically guarantee that the final combined product will be equally spicy, as chemical interactions during cooking or the combination of flavors might neutralize the spice. The author improperly attributes a characteristic of the parts to the whole.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Fallacy of Composition (Part to Whole)