Each of the arguments below is vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it illicitly shifts the meaning of a key term. Pair each flawed argument with the abstract description that most accurately diagnoses its specific equivocation.
- The head coach demands that all athletes attend rigorous practice sessions daily in order to refine their physical conditioning and teamwork. However, our team physician has maintained a highly successful medical practice for over two decades without ever participating in daily physical drills. Therefore, the coach's requirement is unnecessarily burdensome.Confuses a word denoting repeated physical or mental exercise with the same word denoting the professional execution of a career.
- The new municipal taxation policy is heavily criticized by opponents for unfairly discriminating against the owners of small, family-run businesses. Yet, the fundamental duty of any municipal regulatory agency is to properly discriminate among different economic sectors based on their distinct market impacts and community needs. Thus, the criticism of the taxation policy is logically unfounded.Fails to distinguish between making an unjust, prejudiced distinction and evaluating options with judicious discernment.
- The fundamental laws of thermodynamics dictate that the total entropy in any completely isolated system must inevitably always increase over time. Since it is our primary civic duty as responsible citizens to strictly obey the law at all times, laboratory scientists are morally obligated to ensure that the isolated systems in their experiments exhibit increasing entropy.Equivocates between a descriptive scientific generalization regarding natural phenomena and a prescriptive edict governing human conduct.
- A prominent literary reviewer recently claimed that the acclaimed novelist's latest manuscript completely lacks a consistent narrative structure, confusing the reader. But this new manuscript is entirely consistent with the author's previous award-winning works, which also featured deliberately disjointed timelines and fragmented storytelling. Therefore, the reviewer's claim regarding the manuscript's narrative is demonstrably false.Illicitly shifts the meaning of a term from 'internally coherent and logically continuous' to 'conforming with a previously established historical pattern.'
Answer
The correct pairings accurately match the ambiguous term exploited in each argument (practice, discriminate, law, consistent) with the abstract description of how its meaning illicitly changes between the premises and the conclusion.
Each correct pairing successfully diagnoses the dual meanings of the ambiguous terms exploited in the arguments. The coach/physician argument shifts 'practice' from training to a profession; the taxation argument shifts 'discriminating' from prejudice to selection; the thermodynamics argument shifts 'law' from descriptive science to prescriptive rules; and the literary argument shifts 'consistent' from internal coherence to historical alignment.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Equivocation (Uncertain Use of a Term) occurs when an argument relies on a key word or phrase having one meaning in a premise and an entirely different meaning in another premise or the conclusion.
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