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我不知道这样写逻辑对不对。
69.The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.
"Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In this argument, the speaker advocates that the company should use Zeta construction company for their new building project rather than Alpha. To bolster this argument, the speaker provides the evidence ten years ago that the expenses for maintenance of building constructed by Zeta were only half those of Alpha’s, though it costed 30 percent more to build. Also the Zeta building has lower energy consumption. Moreover, Zeta owns fewer employees turnover than Alpha. It seems plausible at first glance, a close scrutiny of each of these facts, however, reveals that an unconvincing reasoning which is rife with flaws is much near the surface. Further questions about these flaws are necessary for a sound conclusion.
In the first place, the speaker fails to answer the question that what reason result in the discrepency of expense of construction. Maybe there is an alternative explanation that the geologic conditions of two regions are totally different. An appropriate example is not far to seek. Assume that the region where Zeta constructed building which has more terrible geologic conditions such as its soil is hard needs more money to overcome problems to construct. Futhermore, even if two buildings has identical floor plans, it does not mean that they are entirely same. It is possible that the building constructed by Zeta possesses much more complicated inner structure which costs a lot of money than that of Alpha. Only when the speaker is able to provide more convincing answers can he confirm that Zeta is much adventageous than Alpha.
In the second place, another problem with the argument involves that even if the evidence turns out to answer the foregoing assumption, the speaker deems that the situations of two companies continue during the last decade. Nevertheless, he does not supply any warrant to verify his assumption. It is likely that both of them change a lot. Maybe Alpha company has developed advanced technological methods as to maintaining building which could save more money than before. If it is so, the past evidence seems not to represent the present even future situation of two companies. Besides that, Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, however, which does not equate with high work efficiency of employees of Zeta. It is possible that an increasingly number of people with good competence and high work efficiency come to Alpha, in the meanwhile, some employees with low work efficiency are fired. After all, a company’s feat is related to its work efficiency. Without illustrating the some relative sound situations about two companies, the speaker can not justifiably conclude that Zeta is better than Alpha.
The last but not the least important, even building upon the correction of what mentioned above, there is still something the speaker avers that using Zata for their new building project is a good choice. Here is a question: what about other cunstruction companies? Could they provide high quality as well as low expense of construction? Maybe one of them is much more competitive than Alpha and Zeta. Unfortunately, the speaker does not give a plausible explanation. It is required to supply some evidences for a proof that Zeta is the most suitable compared to other construction companies including Alpha.
To sum up, the argument actually is scarcely based on valid evidences, also the fact issues are partially interpreted by the speaker out of a subjective bias, hence, leaving many unsolved questions in this argument. To draw a convincing consequence, the questions discussed above need to be answered soundly with sufficient and direct evidences. Otherwise, the argument will retain unwarranted and no persuasive conclusion can be found.
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发表于 2012-2-25 17:44:30
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