Argument 求拍！

SybeDancer

Insurveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing)among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through thecity is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devoteslittle of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. Foryears there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river’swater and the river’s smell. In response, the state has recently announcedplans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is, therefore,sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more moneyin this year’s budget to riverside recreational facilities.

Write a response in which you examine the statedand/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argumentdepends on the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptionsprove unwarranted.

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In this argument, the author concludes that thegovernment should increase funding to riverside recreational facilities. Thepremise provided for this argument is that Manson residents rank water sportsas their favorite, according to a recent survey, and local residents have huge complaintsabout the smelly and dirty water of Manson River. Although the argument is wellpresented and appears to be sound at the first glance, a close scrutiny willreveal that the conclusion is based on some dubious assumptions and thereasoning is biased due to the inadequacy in the nature of evidence provided.

To begin with, the argument rests on a gratuitousassumption that local residents would love to participate in playing the watersports according to a survey. However, there is no evidence that the survey isvalid and the scope is representative of all the residents of Manson City,maybe the sampling is too small to be reliable, or maybe the survey onlyincludes two questions about the water sports among over ten pages of other irrelevantquestions. Even if the survey is scientifically operated, the author fails torealize that although local residents have a penchant for water sports, theyare not necessarily participate in these sports, for instance, they may justlove to watch the games on TV. Therefore, the survey cannot be used toeffectively strengthen the argument.

Besides, the argument assumes that local residentsrarely play the water sports on Manson River because of the poor water qualityand bad smell of the river. While a smelly river do prevent people from usingit as sports field, further evidence that can demonstrate the causal relationbetween these two factors is missing. Although there are complaints about thequality of the Manson River, it may come from a few people who complaints a lotof times, so the validity of the complaints would be weaken. Furthermore, wedon’t know whether there are other possibilities that cause the residents avoidusing the river. For example, people just want to play these sports on vacationaway from the cities, then even if the river is clean and the recreationalfacility along the river is well maintained, local residents will still lackthe interest of using the river.

Finally, the argument fails to take into account thateven though the plan of cleaning up the river has been made by the state, itcould cost a long time to accomplish the project, so why should the governmentspend more money to maintain the recreational facilities so soon? If thecleaning up project needs to consume five years, the earlier investment on therecreational facilities will be a total waste, for no residents will come andplay on a polluted river. Then the usage of river will be increased is just anillusion.

To sum up, theargument is far from compelling enough to substantiate that the city governmentshould devote more money in this year’s budget to riverside recreationalfacilities. Before any final decisions are made about devoting more money soon,more specific evidence should be put forward to make the author’s argument moretrenchant and forceful.

普渡哥

To begin with, the argument rests on a gratuitousassumption that local residents would love to participate in playing the watersports according to a survey. However, there is no evidence that the survey isvalid and the scope is representative of all the residents of Manson City,maybe the sampling is too small to be reliable, or maybe the survey onlyincludes two questions about the water sports among over ten pages of other irrelevantquestions.


我觉得这种质疑很牵强。。。要用证据来证明，不是你想它不对就不对。这不是主观题，是客观题。