Dr. Kaelen: To increase overall workplace productivity, our company should implement mandatory 20-minute mid-afternoon meditation sessions for all employees. Studies confirm that workers who practice structured meditation experience diminished stress levels and sharper focus during working hours.
Elena: Although meditation reduces stress, imposing a fixed daily schedule forces staff to break away from high-concentration tasks mid-workflow. Company activity logs show that such forced task switching introduces cognitive disruption costs that outweigh the focus gained.
Which of the following best describes Elena's method of responding to Dr. Kaelen's argument?
- She refutes the recommendation by demonstrating that an unstated assumption necessary for the proposed policy's effectiveness does not hold.Cevap
- BShe rejects the proposal by contending that an intermediate supporting premise functions instead as the main conclusion.
- CShe challenges the recommendation by arguing that an underlying analogy between corporate employees and research study subjects fails at a critical point.
- DShe undermines the argument by ignoring the explicit qualification provided in support of the initial evidence.
- EShe attacks the argument by treating a structural pivot word as an indication of a change in speaker stance.
Cevap
Elena responds by showing that an unstated assumption required for the proposal's success is invalid because the mandatory implementation causes disruptive context-switching costs that negate the intended benefits.
The correct option accurately captures Elena's rhetorical strategy. Dr. Kaelen assumes that implementing mandatory meditation sessions will boost net workplace productivity. Elena counters by accepting that stress decreases, but demonstrating that mandatory breaks cause context-switching disruptions that reduce overall output. Thus, she refutes the proposal by undermining the unstated assumption that mandatory scheduling would produce a net gain in productivity.
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Anahtar Kavram
Identifying Methods of Reasoning: Undermining an Unstated Assumption