Urban Planner: Whenever a metropolitan transit district achieves an on-time rail reliability rate exceeding 90 percent, private vehicle congestion on surrounding arterial highways declines significantly during peak commuting hours. Over the past twelve months, private vehicle congestion on the arterial highways surrounding Central County declined significantly during peak commuting hours. Thus, Central County's transit district must have achieved an on-time rail reliability rate exceeding 90 percent over the past twelve months.
The reasoning in the urban planner's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument
- Ageneralizes about commuter patterns across an entire region based on a sample of arterial highways that may be unrepresentative
- Bconfuses a claim that serves as an intermediate conclusion with the main conclusion the argument seeks to establish
- infers that a condition is required to achieve a particular outcome merely from the claim that the condition is sufficient to produce that outcomeCevap
- Dbases its conclusion on the claim that traffic survey methodologies failed to accurately measure arterial highway congestion
- Erelies on overly extreme language by claiming that reduced congestion never occurs without increased transit funding
Cevap
The argument's flaw is that it infers that a condition is required to achieve a particular outcome merely from the claim that the condition is sufficient to produce that outcome.
The argument assumes that achieving over 90 percent rail reliability is the only possible cause of significant congestion reduction. While the premise guarantees that high rail reliability will reduce congestion (sufficient condition), it does not establish that high rail reliability is necessary to reduce congestion. Thus, concluding that high rail reliability must have occurred because congestion declined is a mistaken reversal.
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Anahtar Kavram
Conditional Reversal (Affirming the Consequent)