QUESTION TEXT: Political scientist: Democracy depends on free choices…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: In the Information Age, a highly literate society will be a democratic one.
REASONING: In the Information Age, reading skills have become essential to forming well-reasoned opinions. These well-reasoned opinions are the basis of free choice, on which democracy depends.
ANALYSIS: It seems like the political scientist is saying that democracy depends on a literate population. However, their conclusion is different. They conclude that all literate societies will become democratic, which does not follow from the premises.
This is a classic necessary-sufficient error. Democratic societies must be literate, but that doesn’t mean that all literate societies are democratic.
___________
- CORRECT. See above – this is the error we identified.
- The author doesn’t do this. The author only says that reading skills are essential.
- This is outside the scope of the question. We don’t know anything about the reasons for doing something.
- The author isn’t generalizing anything. They’ve just made a conclusion based on an incorrect negation.
- This isn’t what’s happening here – it’s not even an error! If something is happening, then all its prerequisites must be necessarily occurring, otherwise they aren’t prerequisites.
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