#25 - Substantial economic growth must be preceded by

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[cardigan_person]

I am confused about what would be the sufficient and necessary conditions in this question

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Cardigan,

Good question! Let's again briefly recap the argument:

• Premise: Before a big economic boom, we have to have lots of technological innovation.
• Premise: Worldwide ban of fossil fuel would cause lots of technological innovation.
• Conclusion: Worldwide ban of fossil fuel would cause a big economic boom.

Let's start with a description of what's wrong here. Just because we know we must have a lot of technological innovation before a big boom doesn't mean lots of technological innovation will definitely lead to an economic boom. I mean, it might, or it might not. That's the problem here: technological innovation is a necessary precondition for an economic boom, but technological innovation is not necessarily enough to guarantee a big economic boom.

Thus, the necessary condition is the technological innovation, and the sufficient condition is the economic boom.

What can you do to improve your prephrasing here? Walk yourself through these arguments during practice. Get clear on the conclusion. Then walk yourself through the author's reasoning. Once you have a grasp on the reasons given, ask what's wrong; how could it be possible that despite the support given, the conclusion might not be true? Now give a more abstract description of this scenario: just because a requirement must be met for something else to happen, that requirement is not necessarily enough to guarantee that outcome.

Finally, match this prephrase to the answer choices.

I'm eliding a couple shortcuts here (e.g. notice conditional language in the stimulus; find conditional language in the answer choices), but you get the idea.

I hope this helps!

[lp1997]

Hi,

Could someone explain why answer choice E is incorrect? I was deciding between D and E and thought that D was more neat and direct and so chose it. But I'm still not 100% sure why E is incorrect. Is it because E is only saying that the author assumes a causal relationship from merely from the fact that two events occur in tandem sometimes. And so is not really getting to the core of the flaw -- namely that the author is assuming that the technological innovations will lead to growth? In other words, E is merely saying that the author assumes that the innovations, because they sometimes precede growth, cause growth to occur in those instances when they precede growth? And E is not saying that the author assumes that the mere existence of these innovations always results in growth, as answer choice D says?

Thank you very much! Appreciate the help.

[Alex Bodaken]

lp1997,

Thanks for the question! (E) is certainly, in my opinion, the most tempting incorrect answer choice here. Let me try to point out the core issue with it.

Answer choice (E) reads: "The argument presumes, without providing warrant, that because certain conditions only sometimes precede a certain phenomenon, these conditions always bring about the phenomenon." The issue comes in the first part of the answer choice when it says "The author presumes...that because certain conditions only sometimes precede a certain phenomenon..." This misdescribes what is happening in the stimulus. In the stimulus, certain conditions (technological innovations) sometimes bring about a certain phenomenon (economic growth)...but "only sometimes" is different than "sometimes" (sometimes could include always, for example, while "only sometimes" could not). We don't know if these conditions "only sometimes" bring about certain events...for all we know, they could bring them about always (the author then goes on to presume that the conditions bring about certain events always - we don't know that either - we only know that we don't know if they sometimes or always bring them about). Because of the incorrect conflation of "sometimes" and "only sometimes," this answer is incorrect.

Hope that helps,
Alex

[lp1997]

Thank you very much! That clears it up. Appreciate the help!

[Pragmatism]

I was stuck between D and E answer choice and decided to go with E. I found it extremely difficult to choose D because of my diagram:

Since I thought of this argument as a correlation and causation argument instead of sufficient necessary argument, I ended up diagraming this as follows:

BFF (ban on fossil fuel) —-> TI (produce many tech innovations) —-> EG (economic growth must be preceded by)

Thus concluding, BFF —> EG

Using the Correlation/Causation mindset, I thought, well the fact it must be preceded by TI doesn’t mean that it is the sole reason driving such a result. Please help me with my reasoning.

Thanks

I chose E because the stimulus eluded to “many” TI and then concluded with “it is obvious that it will lead to” EG.

[Robert Carroll]

Pragmatism,

There are two different connections in the stimulus, one causal, one conditional.

The first is conditional:

substantial economic growth preceding technological innovations

You appear to have diagrammed this backwards. The stimulus is saying that the growth requires the innovations, which is why the conditional is correctly diagrammed as I have done.

The other statement is causal and you diagrammed the relation correctly, although note that this is a statement of causation, not of conditionality. Thus, if I use the same arrow symbol, I should realize I'm using it in two different ways.

Now the conclusion claims that the ban will lead to substantial economic growth. But the ban was only claimed by the premises to lead to the NECESSARY condition of the first statement. The author seems to think that producing the necessary condition guarantees production of the sufficient condition - this is a classic Mistaken Reversal. Thus, the mistake is correctly described in answer choice (D).

Answer choice (E) couldn't be correct because it says "certain conditions only sometimes precede". But there's no claim that something only sometimes precedes another thing - the stimulus in fact tells me that economic growth MUST be preceded by something, and that "must" entails that it's always preceded by it.

Robert Carroll

[epolinski]

Hi! I was wondering why this is conditional and not causal since it talks about a temporal relationship? I immediately crossed D out because it was conditional language in what i thought was a causal relationship.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi epolinski,

There are temporal words in the stimulus, but they aren't indicating causation. There is not language that says growth causes innovation, but just that it comes first. There is some causal reasoning with the "produce" innovations, but that's not where the error occurs. We find the error in the author's use of the conditional. By saying that substantial growth MUST be preceded by technological innovation, we create a conditional statement. If substantial growth preceding technological innovation. The author tries to use that to say once we have innovation, we can expect to see growth. But that's a mistaken reversal, and cannot be derived from the conditional presented.

Hope that helps!
Rachael