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Difficulty: HardParallel Flaw

Evaluate the reasoning errors in the provided texts. Pair each argument with the precise logical vulnerability it exhibits.

  • The city council's charter mandates that it regulate public utilities. Since maximizing aggregate happiness is the ultimate utility for any functioning society, the council's regulations must aim to maximize aggregate happiness.It relies on the ambiguous use of a key term across two different contexts.
  • Any architect who designs a commercially successful skyscraper must possess an intuitive grasp of structural loads. Clearly, Julian lacks an intuitive grasp of structural loads, because he has never designed a commercially successful skyscraper.It improperly infers that the absence of a sufficient condition guarantees the absence of its necessary condition.
  • The advisory board reviewing the corporate merger consists entirely of analysts who are individually known for making highly risk-averse financial decisions. Therefore, the board's collective recommendation regarding the merger will inevitably be highly risk-averse.It concludes that a characteristic of individual components is inevitably shared by the collective entity they form.
  • In the six months following the implementation of a new dress code at the academy, disciplinary infractions decreased by thirty percent. This conclusively demonstrates that formal attire directly improves student behavior.It assumes a causal relationship between two phenomena solely on the basis of their temporal sequence.

Answer

The correct pairings align the city council argument with Equivocation (ambiguous term), the architect argument with Illegal Negation (absence of sufficient condition), the advisory board argument with Composition (individual to collective entity), and the academy argument with a Causal Flaw (temporal sequence).
Each argument maps uniquely to a classic logical fallacy. The city council argument shifts a definition (equivocation). The architect argument denies the antecedent (illegal negation). The board argument infers a group property from its members (composition). The academy argument conflates correlation with causation (post hoc ergo propter hoc).

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the city council argument.
Identify the shift in the word 'utility' from a specific public service to a broad philosophical concept.
Tracking key terms ensures you catch equivocation fallacies.
2
Diagram the conditional logic in the architect argument.
Identify the structure: Skyscraper -> Structural Grasp. The argument concludes: ~Skyscraper -> ~Structural Grasp. This is an illegal negation.
Translating conditional statements into formal logic reveals structural errors like illegal negation or reversal.
3
Evaluate the advisory board argument's structure.
Identify that the argument moves from the traits of individual analysts to the outcome of their collective recommendation.
Moving from part to whole without justification is a classic composition fallacy.
4
Assess the relationship claimed in the academy argument.
Identify that a timeline of events (dress code then fewer infractions) is used to definitively claim causation.
Recognizing when temporal succession is used as the sole proof of causation exposes a fundamental causal flaw.

Key Concept

Abstract Flaw Identification
Estimated Time:2m 0s
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Topics

Parallel Flaw

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