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菜鸟一只，求批~
52. The following editorial appeared in the Elm City
paper.“The construction last year of a shopping mall in downtown Oak City
was a mistake. Since the mall has opened, a number of local businesses have closed, and the downtown area suffers from an acute parking shortage, and arrests for crime and vagrancy have increased in the nearby Oak City Park. Elm City should pay attention to the example of the Oak City mall and deny the application to build a shopping mall in Elm City.”
Based on various cited facts, the author reaches the conclusion that Elm City should learn from the Oak
City’s history and deny building a shopping mall in the downtown. To better brace for the argument, the author refers to the evidence that numbers of local businesses have closed after the construction of the shopping mall. An additional reason given in support of the recommendation is that the problem of parking shortage has been severer and arrests for crime and vagrancy have increased. Close scrutiny of each of the facts, however, reveals that none of them lends credible support to the conclusion.
In the first place, the author commits a logical fallacy of “after this and therefore because of this”. The argument assumes without justification that the closure of local businesses was due to the shopping mall. However, a mere time consequence does not necessarily prove a casual relationship. In fact, the author has obviously neglected that some other factors may contribute to a certain degree to the bust of local businesses. For example, the strategy of local business is one of the key factors that determine the success of business. There might be numerous problems in the management of the local businesses, and they would bust inevitably even without the construction of the shopping mall. Accordingly, lacking a more detailed analysis of the real cause, it is fallacious for the author to draw any conclusion at all.
Secondly, it is presumptuous to claim that Elm City will experience the same consequence if it adopts Oak
City’s strategy. The argument is based on a dubious assumption that Elm City is analogous to Oak City in all respects. But the author fails to pay attention to the significant difference between these two cities. For example, if the level of education is much higher in Elm City than that in Oak City, the number of crime and vagrancy might not increase after the opening of the shopping mall. In addition, if the parking area in the downtown is often vacant now, it might not suffer a shortage as Oak City did. Thus, without further exploring the dissimilarities between them, the author is just shooting in the dark and jeopardizing all the efforts to reach the conclusion.
As it stands, the reasoning does not constitute a logic argument in favor of the conclusion. To buttress this argument, the author needs more data gathering and analyses to smooth out all the wrinkles in the line of reasoning. For example, the author should provide more concrete evidence to demonstrate that Elm City is the same to Oak
City in all aspects. What is more, the author ought to rule out other alternative situations that might undermine this argument. Only with more convincing evidence, can this argument become more than just an emotional appeal. |
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发表于 2011-11-19 08:12:30
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