Please evaluate my AWA - score + any feedback! Thank you! :)
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28 Aug 2015, 01:11
Prompt:
The following appeared in a magazine article on trends and lifestyles.
"In general, people are not as concerned as they were a decade ago about regulating their intake of red meat and fatty cheeses. Walk into the Heart's Delight, a store that started selling organic fruits and vegetables and whole-grain flours in the 1960's, and you will also find a wide selection of cheeses made with high butterfat content. Next door, the owners of the Good Earth Cafe, an old vegetarian restaurant, are still making a modest living, but the owners of the new House of Beef across the street are millionaires."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
Response:
The author of this article claims that people today are less concerned about regulating their red meat and cheese with high fat content than people a decade ago. As it stands, the author's statement is more his or her own opinion than a well substantiated argument. While they author does provide some instances of the presence of red meat and high-fat cheese in the market, he or she jumps to conclusions without any basis or evidence of actual consumption patterns. The author fails to provide any information about consumer sentiment regarding these foods ten years ago, and somehow concludes that people today care less. The author also fails to consider other factors that might be driving his evidence, thus presenting a myopic view of causation. As it stands, given the information we have, it is not possible to correctly draw the conclusion for reasons discussed below.
First, the author does not provide any evidence of people being highly concerned, or in any measurable way, more concerned about their intake of these foods ten years ago than they are today. While it is possible that people today do not care as much about the intake, we have no reason to believe that people then years ago cared more. For example, it is possible that even more beef and cheese outlets thrived ten years ago than they do today. This is similar to stating that the country of Singapore today is freer than it was ten years ago, and then citing that the British ruled over Singapore some 50 odd years ago. This line of reasoning does not give us any reason to believe that Singapore was not, in fact, free then years ago. Thus, since we do not know about the levels of concern regardling red meat and cheese consumption ten years ago, we cannot correctly conclude as the author does without more information.
Next, the author incorrectly assumes that the success of the beef restaurant or the fact that Heart's Delight stocks these products is due to the decreased concern regarding the intake of these products. The author fails to consider the possiblity that there could be other reasons driving these changes he or she is observing. For example, we live in a world where consumers enjoy more choice than ever before. Perhaps Heart's Delight wants to offer their consumers the choice to buy that product. It does not inherently mean that the product does particularly well compared to ten years ago. Furthermore, there may be other reasons for the House of Beef owners being millionaires while the Good Earth Cafe owners earn modestly. It could be that the owners of the House of Beef made their fortune prior to opening the new restaurant. Even if we do believe that their financial success is because of the restaurant, there could be other reasons such as better service and more interesting unique food offerings. Thus, to simply look at the presence of these products in the market today and conclude that people are less concerned about their intake is incorrect.
Lastly, even if we believe the author's premise that the consumption of these products has gone up - purely for the sake of the argument - there is no evidence that people are any more or less concerned. The author assumes that the concern of the people translates to their actions and therefore, consumption patterns. This shows a clear flaw in judgment. We have seen time and again that this is not always the case. For example, the world today is increasingly concerned about the depletion of fossil fuels and the damage they cause to the environment. Yet, in absolute terms, their consumption has increased year on year. Thus, the author makes an incorrect assumption that people's concerns translate into action - and incorrectly makes a judgment on their level of concern.
To summarize, the author's argument is full of holes - including an assumption of concerns translating into actions and observation of presence of these items in the marketplace somehow coming to mean greater demand. Further, the author provides no evidence of a higher level of concern ten years ago. Unless the author provides proof for this, and shows a bridge between his observations at the different stores and the concern of the people, we cannot logically conclude that people today are less concerned. Alternatively, the author could provide a study that simply shows changes in how "top of mind" the concern regarding red meat and fatty cheese intake is for people. Such a study would focus not on actual consumption, but on the level of concern and how it has changed over time. Perhaps if that evidence existed, and did in fact point to what the author has tried, and failed, to show, we can make correctly conclude the lower level of of concern.