Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life

Question

Competition Mode Question

Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life and once adopted cannot be corrected. Poor reasoning skills waste public and private money, make people less efficient and productive, and diminish our national capacity to compete abroad. But within the past few years, a “thinking skills” movement has arisen. The teaching of reasoning skills is part of this larger movement to make students think more critically. Increasingly, as part of the teaching of decision-making, college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit, and, in the process, to acquire sound reasoning skills.

Which one of the following identifies the most serious logical flaw that this passage contains?

(A) The passage fails to establish a connection between the teaching of decision-making and the teaching of reasoning skills.

(B) The passage contradicts itself by both affirming and denying that patterns of fallacious reasoning can be corrected.

(C) The passage uses circular reasoning by first stating that patterns of fallacious reasoning diminish our capacity for competition and then asserting that lack of competition leads to a lessening of skills.

(D) The passage makes an unwarranted inference from improving thinking skills to teaching reasoning skills.

(E) The passage fails to link the teaching of decision-making to the larger movement to make students think more critically.

kirudang · Answer

My answer is B
Since "fallacious reasoning once adopted cannot be corrected" and later " college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit"

shameekv1989 · Answer

Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life and once adopted cannot be corrected. Poor reasoning skills waste public and private money, make people less efficient and productive, and diminish our national capacity to compete abroad. But within the past few years, a “thinking skills” movement has arisen. The teaching of reasoning skills is part of this larger movement to make students think more critically. Increasingly, as part of the teaching of decision-making, college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit, and, in the process, to acquire sound reasoning skills.

Which one of the following identifies the most serious logical flaw that this passage contains?

(A) The passage fails to establish a connection between the teaching of decision-making and the teaching of reasoning skills.

(B) The passage contradicts itself by both affirming and denying that patterns of fallacious reasoning can be corrected.

(C) The passage uses circular reasoning by first stating that patterns of fallacious reasoning diminish our capacity for competition and then asserting that lack of competition leads to a lessening of skills.

(D) The passage makes an unwarranted inference from improving thinking skills to teaching reasoning skills.

(E) The passage fails to link the teaching of decision-making to the larger movement to make students think more critically.

After 3:42 secs I answered E.

Teaching of reasoning skills is a part of larger movement. But teaching of decision skills which is causing students to avoid fallacies of reasoning is not linked to larger movement. Unless author links it to the larger movement the argument remains flawed that "thinking skills movement" is making any change to improve reasoning skills.

unraveled · Answer

Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life and once adopted cannot be corrected. Poor reasoning skills waste public and private money, make people less efficient and productive, and diminish our national capacity to compete abroad. But within the past few years, a “thinking skills” movement has arisen. The teaching of reasoning skills is part of this larger movement to make students think more critically. Increasingly, as part of the teaching of decision-making, college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit, and, in the process, to acquire sound reasoning skills.
Which one of the following identifies the most serious logical flaw that this passage contains?

Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life and once adopted cannot be corrected. Poor reasoning skills waste public and private money, make people less efficient and productive, and diminish our national capacity to compete abroad. -  Author's take on fallacious reasoning for how it affects us.

But within the past few years, a “thinking skills” movement has arisen. The teaching of reasoning skills is part of this larger movement to make students think more critically. -  Something worth noticing, as author sees it, happening since past few years.

Increasingly, as part of the teaching of decision-making, college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit, and, in the process, to acquire sound reasoning skills. -  Author concludes that as students learn decision making skills they are acquiring reasoning skills, as if, decision making skills are indirectly helping them to learn reasoning skills.

(A) The passage fails to establish a connection between the teaching of decision-making and the teaching of reasoning skills. - WRONG. Teaching of reasoning skills is not discussed.

(B) The passage contradicts itself by both affirming and denying that patterns of fallacious reasoning can be corrected. - WRONG. Irrelevant.

(C) The passage uses circular reasoning by first stating that patterns of fallacious reasoning diminish our capacity for competition and then asserting that lack of competition leads to a lessening of skills. - WRONG. Not mentioned nor can be inferred.

(D) The passage makes an unwarranted inference from improving thinking skills to teaching reasoning skills. - CORRECT. How learning decision making skills under 'thinking skills' movement helps students learn reasoning skills.? This is not covered in the passage. At least from what is mentioned in the passage, it makes a jump here.

(E) The passage fails to link the teaching of decision-making to the larger movement to make students think more critically. - WRONG. Runner-up for me. Of course that's reasonably true but before that it makes a jump in saying that students acquired reasoning skills because they learnt decision making skills.

IMO Answer D.

eakabuah · Answer

B is the right answer.

The passage starts by stating that common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life and once these common patterns are adopted, they cannot be corrected. Meanwhile, along the line, the passage states that a "thinking skills" movement has arisen and that the teaching of reasoning skills is part of this larger movement aimed at making students think critically. It went on further to state that college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit.

The statement that  college students are successfully learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit  clearly contradicts the first claim in the argument that  once common patterns of fallacious reasoning are adopted, they cannot be corrected . This is the flaw in the argument, hence B is the right answer.

Since the teaching of decision-making and teaching of reasoning skills are both counter-premises, it can be implied that they are both connected as part of the "thinking skills" movement. Hence, the absence of an explicit connection between the teaching of decision making and reasoning skills cannot be seen as a flaw to the information presented. The bigger issue relates to the contradictory statements that once common patterns of fallacious reasoning are adopted, they cannot be corrected and that college students are learning to avoid common patterns of fallacious reasoning that they habitually commit. A is incorrect.

This is the correct answer in line with the above.

There is no circular reasoning exhibited in the passage above; hence C is incorrect.

The flaw as established above does not relate to any inference made from improving thinking skills to teaching reasoning skills. Clearly the passage talks about thinking skills as a movement that arose few years after the adoption of common patterns of fallacious reasoning, which cannot be corrected and that the teaching of reasoning skills is part of this larger thinking skills movement. D is thus incorrect.

Just as in A, the link between the teaching of decision making and the teaching of reasoning skills are connected and both are linked to larger movement to make students think more critically. E is therefore incorrect.

freedom128 · Answer

(A) is wrong because the passage doesn't fail to establish a connection between the teaching of decision-making and the teaching of reasoning skills. The passage simply doesn't state it explicitly.

(B) is CORRECT ANSWER. The passage contradicts itself by both affirming and denying that patterns of fallacious reasoning can be corrected.

(C) is wrong because the passage doesn't appear to use circular reasoning.

(D) is wrong because the passage doesn't have to make such warranted inference.

(E) is wrong because the passage doesn't have to link the teaching of decision-making to the larger movement to make students think more critically.

FINAL ANSWER IS (B)

minustark · Answer

If patterns of fallacious reasoning once adopted cannot be corrected, then how the teaching process help the students to rectify the already established poor reasoning skills. This is the main idea of option B, which is the answer.

Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life

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Common patterns of fallacious reasoning are endemic to everyday life

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