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Difficulty: MediumWeaken

Read the following argument:

City Official: Six months ago, we doubled the fines for illegal parking in the downtown commercial district to reduce parking violations. Since the new fines took effect, the number of illegal parking citations issued by traffic enforcement in the district has decreased by 40%. This sharp decline demonstrates that the increased fines have successfully deterred drivers from parking illegally.

The introduction of the fact that 'Due to an ongoing infrastructure project, overall vehicle traffic entering the downtown commercial district has decreased by 50% over the past six months' actively weakens the city official's argument.

Answer: Answer

Answer

The statement is true because the introduced fact provides a compelling alternative explanation for the decrease in parking citations.
The factual assertion introduces an alternative cause for the 40% decrease in parking citations: a 50% drop in overall traffic. If there are half as many cars in the area, a proportional drop in citations is mathematically expected regardless of any change in driver behavior or deterrence. This severs the causal link assumed by the city official, thereby actively weakening the argument. Thus, the statement evaluating this logical dynamic is unequivocally true.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the argument's premises and main conclusion.
Premise: Fines were doubled, and parking citations dropped by 40%. Conclusion: The increased fines successfully deterred illegal parking.
Understanding the core structure of the argument is essential to finding its logical gap.
2
Analyze the logical gap and the primary flaw in the reasoning.
The official assumes that the drop in citations was caused entirely by the increased fines, ignoring other potential factors that could reduce the raw number of citations.
Recognizing a correlation-to-causation leap helps predict what kind of evidence will weaken the argument.
3
Evaluate the new factual assertion against the argument's conclusion.
The new fact reveals that total vehicle traffic dropped by 50%. A 50% reduction in cars easily explains a 40% drop in citations without needing to credit the new fines.
To weaken the argument, the new fact must make the conclusion less likely to follow from the premises, which this alternative explanation does perfectly.

Key Concept

Weakening a causal conclusion by introducing a viable alternative explanation for an observed correlation.
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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