AdityaHongunti wrote:
mikemcgarry DmitryFarber GMATNinja
the correct choice says that the second bold face is a premise
now as far as i know a premise is something which has to be taken as true and cannot be challenged or its validity cannot be question.
now the second bold face is an opinion of the author and explicitly mentioned by him/her that "it may ....."
please explain
egmat Manukaran wrote:
I had the exact same doubt. I have an impression that premise is a fact, while here, the 2nd BF is clearly an opinion and not a fact. So, how is E the right answer?
Yes, a premise is a statement that must be taken as true, and cannot be questioned.
But this doesn't mean that
the premise itself must indicate that something is
definitely true. Consider this instructional example:
Quote:
Weatherman: Commuters who want to stay dry on their way home should take an umbrella to work today. It's possible that we'll see heavy rainfall between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.
The premise (which is
bolded) clearly supports the weatherman's conclusion. However, the premise doesn't read, "It will definitely rain." The premise reads, "It's
possible that we'll see heavy rainfall."
We take
the entire statement to be true, but the statement itself tells us what is
possible. It doesn't matter whether this forecast only tells us what
might happen. The overall statement is still a valid premise.
Coming back to our
OG question, here's the conclusion again:
Quote:
Increasing the urgency of a public health message may be counterproductive.
And here are the two premises backing up this conclusion:
- Increasing the urgency of a public health message irritates the majority who already behave responsibly.
- Increasing the urgency of a public health message undermine all government pronouncements on health by convincing people that such messages are overly cautious.
Both premises support the public health expert's conclusion. The second premise doesn't offer a 100% confirmation that increasing the urgency will undermine all government pronouncements. But we don't need that in order to accept this as a premise supporting the conclusion.
I hope this helps!
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