#24 - Families with underage children make up much of the

[atierney]

Hi Atan,

Yes, so in answer to this question, I think most adults with children probably on some level vote with their children in mind. Or at least, maybe that's what I'd like to believe! Whether they do or not reality is something I really don't know, and honestly, one doesn't need to know in order to answer this question! Remember this question is asking about the principle behind the argument being made, and the argument is pleading for additional votes given to parents so that they can do just what you're asking about, mainly so that they can vote on behalf of their children.

Now, the argument proceeds in a manner such that a problem is identified and a solution is presented. The problem, according to the argument, is that lawmakers pay too little attention to families, mostly because the children don't have votes and therefore are presumed not to have a say in the democratic process. The remedy is to give the parents extra votes. Now lawmakers are incentivized to pay attention to these families, since they are a necessarily larger share of the votes than they were before. The argument concludes that fair representation would be achieved, and such an argument is true, only if the proposed "remedy," giving parents extra votes to vote on behalf of their children, allows for this fair representation to occur. Thus, E is the correct answer.

As a side note, I definitely understand your critique of the proposed remedy; it's not clear that in practice the children would actually get fair representation by granting their parents extra votes. However, and this is an important general point, you never want to "argue" with the argument unless you're specifically asked to weaken or identify a flaw in its reasoning. We always take whatever they tell us as factual evidence, and if we're asked to strengthen, justify, or identify necessary assumptions, i.e. "help" the argument) we have to presume its validity, regardless of our thoughts on its reasonableness.

[Tyler1237]

Hello,

I got this question wrong as I chose C. Basically I was trying to match the premise and conclusion but chose the wrong premise (“lawmakers in democracies pay too little attention to the interests” instead of “receive fair representation”). I understand why E is correct as it connects the additional votes to the fair representation, but I’m trying to understand why I made the mistake in the first place.

My main question here is what is the FULL conclusion of this stimulus? I thought it was just “ To remedy this, parents should be given additional votes to cast on behalf of their underage children.” And the first and last sentence of the stimulus would both be two different premises. Even with the last sentence, when I try to determine which is which by using the word because, saying “parents should be given additional votes to cast on behalf of their underage children because families with underage children would thus receive fair representation” makes sense and puts the middle sentence in conclusion position and the last sentence in a premise one.

But the administrator above says the conclusion is that underage children would receive fair representation if their parents were given additional votes to cast on their behalf, combining the second and last sentences. If this is so, I didn’t realize a conclusion could span two different sentences. Is it because of the word “thus” in the last sentence that these two sentences are then linked, where one would be causing/indicating the other must occur?

[Dana D]

Hey Tyler,

You could rewrite the last two sentences as "To remedy this, parents should be given additional votes to cast on behalf of their underage children [so that] Families with underage children would thus receive fair representation". Even though these are two sentences, it really is one connected point. The rest of the stimulus is supporting this final proposal. I think seeing a conclusion across multiple sentences like this is rare, but I would concentrate on the content/idea more than the grammatical division of the clauses and it makes sense that these are one idea.

Hope that helps!