Critical reasoning/Readings/Reading 5/Quiz 2

= Instructions =

Answer all questions. For each question you must identify the one correct Answer and record your Answers in a digital file. When you are ready, post YOUR suggested answer to the course Blog site. Now compare your responses to those of other students. Initiate a discussion with students who have responded differently and try to come to an agreement on the best possible response. Questions/activities

Read the following passage and then answer questions 7- 15 that follow. I don’t think you can ever eliminate the economic factor motivating women to prostitution. (a) Even a call girl could never make as much in a straight job as she could at prostitution. (b) All prostitutes are in it for the money. (c) With most uptown call girls, the choice is not between starvation and life, but it is a choice between R5 000 and R25 000 or between R10 000 and R50 000. (d) That’s a pretty big choice: a pretty big difference. (e) You can say that they’re in this business because of the difference of R40 000 a year. (f) A businessman would say so. (g) Businessmen do things because of the difference of R40 000 a year. (h) Call girls do go into capitalism and think like capitalists. (i) But you can’t say, even of the call girl, that she has so many other ways to earn an adequate living. (j) Even with an undergraduate degree, chances are that she couldn’t do better than earn R5 000 or R6 000 a year, outside of prostitution. (k) (Kate Millet (ed.), The Prostitution Papers)

7. What is the main conclusion of the argument?

1 (b)

2 (a)

3 (h)

4 (i)

8. What kind of argument is being made?

1 A deductive argument.

2 An empirical inductive argument.

3 An epistemological argument.

4 A value argument.

9. Which structure best represents the argument above?

1 An inductive argument. Conclusion - (i) Premises - (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g), (h), (j) and (k)

2 A chain argument. Main conclusion – (c) Sub-conclusion - (k) Premises for sub-conclusion - (f), (g), (h), (i) and (j) Premises for main conclusion - (a), (b), (d), (e) and (k)

3 A chain argument. Main conclusion - (k) Sub-conclusion – (c) Premises for sub-conclusion - (a) and (b) Premises for main conclusion – (c), (d), (e), (f), (g), (h), (i) and (j)

4 A chain argument. Main conclusion - (a) Sub-conclusion 1 - (h) Sub-conclusion 2 - (k) Premises for sub-conclusion 1 -(d), (e), (f) and (g) Premises for sub-conclusion 2 -(i) and (j) Premises for main conclusion - (b), (c), (h) and (k)

10. Statements (i), (j) and (k) represent a sub-argument of their own.

1 True

2 False

11. In statements (f), (g), (h) and (i) the author makes a sub-argument. How does the argument work?

1 It is a valid deductive argument.

2 It is a sound argument by analogy.

3 The author commits the fallacy of reasoning by faulty analogy.

4 It is a persuasive definition.

12. Which of the following sentences best describes the author’s attitude to prostitution?

1 Prostitution is a profitable business for women.

2 Prostitution should be legalized without delay.

3 Prostitution is degrading to women.

4 Prostitution is a social evil.

13. Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the argument in the passage?

1 Women can make more money in other professions than they do as prostitutes.

2 Prostitution is immoral.

3 It is unhealthy for women to work as prostitutes.

4 Prostitutes come from all social classes and are not restricted to lower-class women.

14. Which sentence, if true, would most strengthen the argument in the passage?

1 (d)

2 (k)

3 (a)

4 (i)

15. How can you best evaluate the argument in the passage?

1 The author offers an unsound inductive value argument. The premises are not true and, furthermore, do not adequately support the conclusion.

2 The author offers a valid deductive argument. The premises are true and guarantee the truth of the conclusion, so the argument holds true under all circumstances.

3 This is a sound, inductive argument. The premises are acceptable and offer adequate support for the conclusion, so the conclusion is likely to be true.

4 This is a valid, inductive empirical argument. The premises are based on verifiable facts and so the conclusion must be true as well.

16. Read through the following paragraph and identify the kind of writing illustrated by it: “I could not fix bodies as simple objects of thought. Not only did bodies tend to indicate a world beyond themselves, but this movement beyond their own boundaries, a movement of boundary itself, appeared to be quite central to what bodies ‘are.’ I kept losing track of the subject. It proved resistant to discipline. Inevitably, I began to consider that perhaps this resistance to fixing the subject was essential to the matter at hand” (Butler, Bodies that matter, Routledge, New York,1994: ix).

1 Descriptive writing

2 Comparative writing

3 Narrative writing

4 Argumentative writing

17. Identify the kind of writing in the following text: “I was imprisoned for most of the autumn of 1981 and the first month of 1982. At first I was kept in the corridor of the Joint Committee, an old torture station from the Sha’s regime that had been reactivated by the Islamic Republic of Iran. There were many women in the cells of the ward where I was being kept. So, the men remained in the corridor, with blindfolds covering their eyes, sleeping there, eating prison rations, and waiting. I stayed in these conditions for twenty-two days” (Baraheni in Another sky: voices of conscience from around the world, edited by L. Popescu and C. Seymour-Jones, 2007: 3).

1 Descriptive writing

2 Comparative writing

3 Narrative writing

4 Argumentative writing

18. Read through the following excerpt and identify the kind of writing illustrated by it: “The Sages of Sivana had a wonderful way to ensure that their thoughts were pure and wholesome. This technique was also highly effective in transforming their desires, however simple, into reality. The method will work for anyone. It will work for a young lawyer who seeks financial abundance just as it will work for a mother seeking a richer family life or a salesperson seeking to close more sales. The technique was known to the sages as the Secret of the Lake” (R.S. Sharma, The monk who sold his Ferrari, 1997: 65).

1 Descriptive writing

2 Comparative writing

3 Narrative writing

4 Argumentative writing

19. Identify the type of writing in the following paragraph: “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature has provided and left it in, he has mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature has placed it in, it has by this labor something annexed to it that excluded the common right of other men. For this labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others” (John Locke, The Second Treatise on Government, Prometheus Books, New York, 1986).

1 Descriptive writing

2 Comparative writing

3 Narrative writing

4 Argumentative writing

20. Identify the kind of writing in the following text: “Time is space for human development. A man who has no free time at his disposal, whose whole life, leaving aside merely physical interruptions by sleep, meals, etc., is occupied in working for the capitalists, is lower than a beast of burden” (Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, 1847).

1 Descriptive writing

2 Comparative writing

3 Narrative writing

4 Argumentative writing