argument一篇，求指导

杨姝云

The following appeared in a recommendation from the president of Amburg'sChamber of Commerce.

"Last October the city of Belleville installed high-intensitylighting in its central business district, and vandalism there declined withina month. The city of Amburg has recently begun police patrols on bicycles inits business district, but the rate of vandalism there remains constant. Weshould install high-intensity lighting throughout Amburg, then, because doingso is a more effective way to combat crime. By reducing crime in this way, wecan revitalize the declining neighborhoods in our city."

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Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed toevaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthenthe argument.

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The president of Amburg's Chamber of Commerce says that we should installhigh-intensity lighting throughout Amburg so that we can revitalize thedeclining neighborhoods in our city. In this argument, the president gives somereasons and they seem good, however, when we scrutinize the reasoning process,we can find that there might be other possibilities in some of the evidence.

In the first place, the author claims that the city of Bellevilleinstalled this kind of high-intensity lighting in central business districtlast October, and as a consequence, vandalism declined soon. From my point ofview, this doesn't necessary mean that it was because of the new lights thatthe vandalism rates declined. It's likely that the vandalism in Bellevilledeclined as a result of the temperature there became lower from October and peoplewho always did it didn't want to go out at night to vandalize. So the decliningof vandalism was just a coincidence with the installation of high-intensitylighting. Furthermore, it's also probable that city of Belleville began policepatrols particularly on vandalism. The author of the argument omits those possibilitiesand the argument becomes weak. To make his argument more convincing, the authorhas to provide more information which can indicate that the installation of newlights was the reason for declining of vandalism in Belleville.

By almost the same token, the author argues that the city of Amburgrecently began police patrols on bicycles in business district, but the rate ofvandalism stays the same. Readers will feel it unreasonable because there aremany possibilities account for this. For instance, the police patrols only inthe areas for bikes and vandals prefer somewhere else rather than areas forbicycles. It's also possible that police saw those vandals but they didn'tarrest them for their duty was just on bikes. There can be a lot of other chancesbut the president doesn't refer them at all. And this is why this argumentseems so unpersuasive. To strengthen it, the author should say something thatcan exclude all the other chance so we can be convinced by him.

In addition, the author also avers that we can revitalize the decliningneighborhoods in our city by reducing crime in this way. It's likely that thethings will instead go the other way. For instance, what if the vandals whoalways vandalize traffic boards or roads find it interesting to vandalize onthis high-intensity lighting? If this happens, the installation will not reducethe crime and it will even improve the rate. Moreover, the declining ofneighborhoods is not due to the crimes, but destructive policies by governmentsor the poor quality of some people in Amburg. In this sense, the argumentbecomes vulnerable and unconvincing. So the author has to consider thesituation of Amburg and need to show us more about the effectiveness of hisrecommendation in this argument.

To sum up, this seemingly good recommendation is not as convincing as itseems like. There are lots of things that the author doesn't clarify and itallows other possibilities to weaken the argument. Only by providing moreevidence to support the argument can we take this lighting-installation thinginto consideration.

普渡哥

To sum up, this seemingly good recommendation is not as convincing as it seems like.

seemingly 和seems有点重复。