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 Robert Carroll
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#95550
Toby,

I think there is a more straightforward way to see why answer choice (B) is incorrect.

The stimulus is saying that, because one method (statistical analysis) within a general category of methods (physical sciences) won't work to explain a phenomenon (human mental events), no other method within that category will work either.

Answer choice (B) is saying that one method (appeal to the psychology of emotion) won't work to explain some phenomena (computer-generated music) within a general category of phenomena (all music), so no explanation is possible.

Breaking it down even further, the stimulus says that because one kind of explanation won't work, no explanation will work. There's the generalization - one method fails, so all methods fail. Answer choice (B) is saying that one method won't explain some phenomena, so no method can explain all phenomena in that category - the generalization there is from failure to explain one kind of phenomenon to failure to explain all similar phenomena. The generalization is different here. In the stimulus, the generalization is from one failed method to all methods; in answer choice (B), the generalization is not about methods but about the subject matter they're trying to explain.

Robert Carroll
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 Mmjd12
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#105636
Hi,

Besides the leap in logic made in the stimulus, is there also a mistaken negation happening in there as well?
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 Jeff Wren
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#105648
Hi Mmjd,

No, there is no Mistaken Negation in the stimulus.

My guess is that you may have mis-diagrammed the second sentence in the stimulus, as this one can be tricky.

As Nikki explained in an earlier post, this sentence should be diagrammed:

Use Statistical Analysis --> Explain Events that can be replicated to the last detail

Since human mental events cannot be replicated, then (using the contrapositive) we cannot use statistical analysis to explain them.

This part of the argument is fine; the flaw takes place in the conclusion as discussed in earlier posts.

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