#14 - If the proposed tax reduction package is adopted this

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello

So I think I got the conditionals down with this one

tax red adopted library discontinue str. hrs.

daily str. hrs discont. parents inconvenienced

I combined this as :if tax red adopted parents will be inconvenienced

So the gap is b/w whether the parents will be inconvenienced doesn't necessarily mean that the tax plan will be adopted?

So my contra + was : parents will not be inconvenienced tax plan not adopted

is this correct? So then D is the contra postive of this?

[Adam Tyson]

You're most of the way there - your diagram of the premises is perfect. The approach you are taking to analyze it, though, sounds more like a Flaw in the Reasoning approach - you're thinking about what's wrong with it. Instead, think not about what the premises don't prove, but about how you can close the gap between the premises and the conclusion.

The premises give you Tax Reduction --> Discontinue Hours --> Inconvenience. The conclusion says they won't do the tax reduction. How do we prove No Tax Reduction? Just like you did - add "No Inconvenience".

You're definitely on the right track! Well done.

Adam

[Johnclem]

Hello,
For this question I was really stuck between B and D. This is why I was so tempted by B: where did I go wrong ?

Tax reduction adopted ---> library discontinues story hrs--> parents greatly inconvenienced
Conclusion: tax reduction will not be adopted

Analysis :
We need the contapositive of the stimulus to conclude the tax will not get adopted .

B) library discontinues hrs --> parents greatly inconvenienced
If we take the contra positive of this statement we get tax will not be adopted.


D) tax reduction that would inconvenience parents --> will not get adopted .


Thanks
John

[David Boyle]

Hello,
For this question I was really stuck between B and D. This is why I was so tempted by B: where did I go wrong ?

Tax reduction adopted ---> library discontinues story hrs--> parents greatly inconvenienced
Conclusion: tax reduction will not be adopted

Analysis :
We need the contapositive of the stimulus to conclude the tax will not get adopted .

B) library discontinues hrs --> parents greatly inconvenienced
If we take the contra positive of this statement we get tax will not be adopted.


D) tax reduction that would inconvenience parents --> will not get adopted .


Thanks
John

Hello Johnclem,

Answer B is more like a restatement of what the stimulus tells us, that if a package causes discontinued story hours, parents are inconvenienced. But more than that is needed here. Answer D, as Adam has discussed above, gives us a link of inconvenience to not passing the tax package, i.e., inconvenience no adopting proposed tax package. (It was phrased above as something like "No inconvenience, so no tax package." But however it's phrased, either the way just described, or as "If it inconveniences parents, it will not be passed", it's largely the same thing.)

Hope this helps,
David

[jdbh2022]

Hi,

My problem is that I do not see the answer choice D as "not inconvenience".
To me, there seems to be a conditional logic embedded in this. Answer choice D translates to "If it inconvenience parents, it will not be adopted.

However, the argument given is that
If tax package adopted --> discontinues the reading program
discontinues the reading program --> inconveniences parents

Conclusion: the tax package will not be adopted.

If we add the answer choice D back to the original argument, then it becomes

If tax package adopted --> discontinues the reading program
discontinues the reading program --> inconveniences parents
inconveniences parents --> tax package not adopted.

At this point, the argument does not seem to even make sense.

How did you determine that answer D should translate to "not inconveniencing parents" instead of translating it as a conditional statement?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi jdbh,

It's fine to read answer choice D as a conditional! And the way you've interpreted that conditional statement is perfect: if it would inconvenience parents, then it will not be adopted.

Here's how it works when you add that answer choice, even as a conditional, back into the argument:

Stated Stimulus Premises: The proposed tax reduction package would greatly inconvenience many parents. (We know this because of the conditional chain the premises create.)
+
Answer Choice D: Any package that would greatly inconvenience parents will not be adopted.
=
Conclusion: The proposed package will not be adopted (because it inconveniences parents, and any package that does that will not be adopted).

Perfect argument!

[Blondeucus]

I selected D primarily because I thought that it was a more exclusive answer but wouldn't E also lead to the same result with not using a tax package that would inconvenience parents? I had trouble separating them so I feel like a good explanation would help me separate similar answers in the future.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi Blondeucus!

Answer choice (D) is diagrammed as:

PI ATY

That is, if a measure would inconvenience parents, then it will not be adopted this year.

This gets us to the conclusion that ATY. A given tax reduction would inconvenience parents--this gives us PI. When we add PI this to the above diagram, this gives us ATY.

Answer choice (E) is diagrammed as:

ATY PI

To your question, this would not lead to the same result. It might initially look close to the contrapositive. However, The contrapositive of

PI ATY

is:

ATY PI

Since the contrapositive says the same thing, it would get us to the same result.

[kristinajohnson@berkeley.edu]

"If the proposed tax reduction package is adopted this year, the library will be forced to discontinue its daily story hours for children. But if the daily story hours are discontinued, many parents will be greatly inconvenienced. So the proposed tax reduction package will not be adopted this year."

Answer choice D: "No tax reduction package that would greatly inconvenience parents will be adopted this year."

Premise: tax reduction package adopted THEN discontinue daily story hours THEN inconvenienced

Conclusion: tax reduction package NOT adopted

NOT inconvenienced THEN NOT discontinue daily story hours THEN tax reduction package NOT adopted

We need NOT inconvenienced then tax reduction package NOT adopted

However, people in this discussion are saying that answer choice D says inconvenienced THEN tax reduction package NOT adopted! What am I missing here??? This is supposed to be NOT inconvenienced THEN tax reduction package NOT adopted, right??? Can someone please show how answer choice D is turned into a conditional statement that says NOT inconvenienced then tax reduction package NOT adopted?

The no in the beginning of answer choice D is modifying the necessary condition, adopted, so I think it reads, IF inconvenience THEN tax reduction package will NOT be adopted, is that incorrect?

[Dana D]

Hey Kristina,

Again I want to encourage you to move away from the very formulaic way of thinking you're applying to these questions. You're very close to the correct paraphrased answer, but some small addition when transfering the stimulus to conditional logic can trip you up and thinking in strict conditionals isn't always necessary.

Think through what the question is actually asking - the conclusion is that the tax package will not be identified.

Why?

Because parents will lose story hours and be inconvenienced. But why would that alone determine that the tax bill won't be adopted? We need an answer choice that will basically say we would never adopt a tax bill that would inconvienence parents - that ties the inconvience to the conclusion and "justifies" it like the stimulus asks. Don't think in strict "IF/NOT/THEN" terms - that's enough of a paraphrase to send us to the answer choices.

So answer choice (D) tells us that no tax package that inconvienences parents would be adopted. Add that back into the stimulus to see if it 'forces' (justifies) the conclusion - here, this answer choice itself is the sufficient condition which would force the conclusion (the necessary condition) to be true.

So if the tax package would inconvienence parents, and no tax package that inconvinences parents would ever be adopted, it makes sense to say that the tax package will not be adopted, right?

Hope that helps!