QUESTION TEXT: Anthropologist: Every human culture has taboos against …
QUESTION TYPE: Method of Reasoning
CONCLUSION: It’s not necessarily true that cultures ban people from eating some animals because those animals are useful.
REASONING: It’s possible. But it’s also possible that cultures find other uses for animals because they can’t eat them.
ANALYSIS: The anthropologist shows that the evidence for the conclusion is also consistent with a completely opposite explanation.
The anthropologist hasn’t proven the conclusion is wrong. They’ve just proven it isn’t necessarily right.
___________
- CORRECT. This is the best description. The evidence supports multiple conclusions. So more evidence is needed.
- The anthropologist didn’t prove that the conclusion is false. They say ‘might’, in the second-to-last line. They proved the argument isn’t necessarily true, but that’s not the same as proving it wrong.
- The author hasn’t shown the alternate explanation is more plausible. They say ‘might’, twice; they’re uncertain. The author’s point was that another hypothesis was just as plausible.
- They haven’t shown any evidence incompatible with the researchers’ argument. They’ve used the same evidence to show an alternative hypothesis is plausible.
- Not quite right. The anthropologist is doing more than switching the sequence of events. They’re saying one of the events might not have occurred.The original events were: discover animals worth more alive, create taboo against using animals.The alternate events were: Create taboo, find other uses.
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Natalie says
(E) is not right because the anthropologist does not “argue that the events argued in a different sequence; he/she just says that it “might have arisen” with a different sequence.
FounderGraeme Blake says
True, the lack of certainty in the anthropologist’s argument is another reason to eliminate E. There are often multiple problems with answers.
What I wrote is also valid, to be clear: I try to give one clear reason why an answers wrong, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t other reasons.