#23 - Commentator: Human behavior cannot be fully understood

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (B)

The commentator from this stimulus presents the conclusion of the argument in the opening sentence, followed by what the author presents as supporting evidence. Really, though, this is how the argument proceeds:

• Premise: Hypothetically, even with all scientific information, we would still not truly comprehend an action or its cause.
  Conclusion: Human behavior cannot be understood with just science.

This argument is rather circular: “We can't understand behavior based simply on science. For example, even if we had all the science we still wouldn’t understand.” Thus the flaw is that the author’s reasoning is circular. The correct answer choice will reflect this.

Answer choice (A): The hypothetical offered by the commentator is not an analogy, and it is more than superficially related to the issue at hand.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. The supporting “evidence” presumes the conclusion to be true, so nothing is logically proven.

Answer choice (C): There is no discussion of the failure to prove any proposition false, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): As there is no requirement for the speaker to divulge such information, this is not a flaw, and this is thus not the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E): The commentator does not make this presumption—rather, the author presents a hypothetical scenario, so this answer choice is incorrect.

[lolaSur]

Hi!

To clarify, I should have interpreted the word "nonphysical" in the first line to be synonymous with "science?" I chose A because the conclusion states "human behavior cannot be fully understood without inquiring into nonphysical aspects of persons" the evidence that follows as an example is described as "physical evidence." That is why I chose A because I thought: well if we need to investigate nonphysical aspects then considering physical aspects would be irrelevant here. How am I supposed to know that "nonphysical" is supposed to be synonymous with "science?" What in the passage should have alerted me to "nonphysical" being synonymous with "science?"

Thank you so much in advance.

For my reference (L7, flaw q51-55, q 52).

[KelseyWoods]

Hi LolaSur!

To be clear, nonphysical is not synonymous with science. In fact, physical is more synonymous with scientific and nonphysical would be more synonymous with non-scientific. But you don't actually need to determine that any of these terms are synonymous to identify this flaw.

Remember, in flaw questions, identify the conclusion, identify the premises, and identify why the premises don't fully prove the conclusion.

Conclusion: Human behavior cannot fully be understood without looking at nonphysical aspects of persons.

Premise: A complete account of the physical aspects of person can not truly explain human actions.

The flaw here is that this conclusion and this premise are basically the same. Why can't human behavior be fully understood without looking at nonphysical aspects? Because physical aspects cannot fully explain human behavior. This is a circular argument because the evidence the author provides us basically assumes that the conclusion is already true, rather than offering any actual support for the conclusion. Answer choice (B) describes this flaw and is therefore correct.

Answer choice (A) is incorrect because the author does not use an analogy (he doesn't make a comparison between similar cases).

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[a19]

So, could you please explain why C is incorrect? I think I see why B is the right error here, but I am not fully certain why C technically isn't an error as well.

Conclusion: Human behavior cannot be fully understood without asking about nonphysical aspects of persons.
Premise: Imagine if we knew all about the physical aspect.
Premise: With the physical stuff we still don't know the behavior (action).

Does this not try to prove that if we understand human behavior, then we know about nonphysical aspects? It accepts in the absence of evidence stating falsity that we must know about nonphysical aspects?

Or maybe is the argument using the absence of evidence as proof that this option (nonphysical) must be included to understand human behavior?

[Paul Marsh]

Hey a19! Answer Choice (C) says that the argument is flawed because "It concludes that a proposition must be true merely on the grounds that it has not been proven false."

Every part of a correct Flaw answer choice must describe something that the argument in the stimulus is actually doing. If part of a Flaw answer choice describes something that is not happening in the stimulus's argument, then that answer choice is wrong.

I've bolded above the portion of (C) that runs off the rails. The argument in the stimulus never says that the proposition hasn't been proven false. That is never used as support for the conclusion. So that cannot be the Flaw.

What would the stimulus need to look like in order for (C) to be correct? Maybe if it said something like: "Human behavior cannot be fully understood without inquiring into nonphysical aspects of persons. After all, no research has ever definitively proved otherwise". In that argument I just made, the failure to prove the proposition false is used as the sole premise for the conclusion. But the stimulus in this question doesn't mention anything about failure to prove the proposition false. So that can't be the Flaw here.

Hope that helps!

[ashpine17]

Agh, I didn't think this was circular reasoning. I thought this was complete evidence because the premise only talked about "some action"
why is this wrong?

[ashpine17]

I meant "incomplete evidence"

[Luke Haqq]

Hi ashpine17!

The commentator's argument is circular because it repeats the conclusion as evidence/a premise in support of itself.

The conclusion is the first line of the stimulus: "Human behavior cannot be fully understood without inquiring into nonphysical aspects of persons." To support this argument, the commentator presents as evidence a human action that has been described in all its physical aspects and then claims that this description wouldn't be describing everything. That's merely restating the conclusion, and then using that restatement in support of the conclusion.

I wasn't sure from your comments which answer choice you selected. You mention "incomplete evidence," but I don't see an answer choice that quite fits that. There's answer choice (D), "It fails to indicate whether the speaker is aware of any evidence that could undermine the conclusion." That's not exactly about incomplete evidence, though, but rather about the commentator's awareness of contrary evidence.

[ashpine17]

human behavior is braoder than an action, isn't it? i don't get how the support isn't an example i don't see how it's repeating

[Jeremy Press]

Hi ashpine,

No, I'd say it's just the reverse. Human behaviors (the ways humans behave, i.e. the things they do) are actions, though they're not the only things that constitute actions. So human behavior is something that fits within what we'd describe as an action. Since the conclusion thus falls within the premise and doesn't say anything different than it, it's just a basic restatement of the premise, and circular reasoning.