#2 - Adults have the right to vote; so should adolescents.

[jorrego22]

Hello -
Could someone please help here as I'm having a hard time understanding the meaning of "attacking the conclusion."
I understand the negation technique is used to weaken the conclusion. If successful, it means the answer choice is the correct answer. Where I run into trouble is doing all this magic in my head.
Correct answer C when negated says "adolescents should not have their interests represented." The conclusion rephrased is that adults cannot represent the adolescents' interests. Thus, adolescents should have the right to vote so their interests can be represented.
At face value, the negated answer seems to be the logical opposite of the conclusion. Is this why C is the correct answer?
I'm currently facing a wall. I am following the LR book and have gone through the Assumption chapter multiple times. I think I have the concepts, but when I do some of the drills I'm lost. Being lost turns into finding excuses to do something else.
Appreciate any advise. Thaks!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi jorrego,

Just to clarify, the conclusion of this argument is "so should adolescents" (meaning adolescents should also have the right to vote). The word "so" is a conclusion indicator, which is a clue that this statement is the conclusion. Everything else in the argument (including the fact that "adults cannot be expected to represent the interests of adolescents") supports this statement.

If "adolescents should not have their interests represented" (the negation of Answer C), this directly weakens/attacks the conclusion of the argument that adolescents should also have the right to vote. The negation of Answer C is not the opposite of the conclusion (that would be the statement "adolescents should not have the right to vote"), but it does weaken the conclusion by attacking the reason given in the argument for why adolescents should also have the right to vote.