Regarding Questions 6 of the Premise and Conclusion Analysis

[TargTru99^]

Greetings,

I am currently doing the homework for Lesson 1 of the Live Online Course. I've just completed the Premise and Conclusion Analysis Drill and had further trouble with question 6 on p. 1-55 of the course book. I've even read the explanation in the book to better understand why the argument was not a valid argument, but all it said that just because unemployment shot up after the implementation of the policies does not mean the policies caused the bump in unemployment. For this to be a valid argument, does this stimulus have to have a premise that shows the connection between unemployment and the policy and how the policy affects unemployment in a way that brings it up? Is that the premise that this stimulus is currently lacking?

[James Finch]

Hi Targ,

To answer your question, this is a faulty causal argument, because there is no evidence/premise showing an actual causal relationship, rather than mere correlation. Simply showing a correlation between two phenomena is not sufficient to showing that a causal relationship exists; there may be an alternate cause for one or both of the events described. This will be further expanded upon in lessons 3 and 4, where Weaken and Strengthen question types are explained, respectively.

Hope this clears things up!