When Stanley Park first opened, it was the largest, most heavily used public park in town. It is still the largest park, but it is no longer heavily used. Video cameras mounted in the park's parking lots last month revealed the park's drop in popularity: the recordings showed an average of only 50 cars per day. In contrast, tiny Carlton Park in the heart of the business district is visited by more than 150 people on a typical weekday. An obvious difference is that Carlton Park, unlike Stanley Park, provides ample seating. Thus, if Stanley Park is ever to be as popular with our citizens as Carlton Park, the town will obviously need to provide more benches, thereby converting some of the unused open areas into spaces suitable for socializing.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
C1: When Stanley Park first opened, it was the largest, most heavily used public park in town. It is still the largest park, but it is no longer heavily used.
G1: Video cameras mounted in the park's parking lots last month revealed the park's drop in popularity: the recordings showed an average of only 50 cars per day.
G2: In contrast, tiny Carlton Park in the heart of the business district is visited by more than 150 people on a typical weekday.
G3: An obvious difference is that Carlton Park, unlike Stanley Park, provides ample seating.
C2: Thus, if Stanley Park is ever to be as popular with our citizens as Carlton Park, the town will obviously need to provide more benches, thereby converting some of the unused open areas into spaces suitable for socializing.
G1 C1
C1 contrasts G2
G3 explains the difference
C2 is a proposed policy transfer
A1(G1, C1): The recordings about the cars accurately reflect the popularity of the park.
A2(G3,G2): The popularity of the Carlton Park resulted from the availability of ample seating.
A3(G3, C2): The proposed policy transfer can fix the problems that make the Stanley Park less attractive.
It is argued that, in order to increase the popularity of Stanley Park, more benches should be provided following the example of Carlton Park. A number of assumptions about the camera recordings and the effects of seating availability to the attractiveness of both parks have been made and need further investigation in order to assess the argument.
To begin with, it is assumed that the video cameras recordings of the number of cars in one month can accurately reflect the popularity of Stanley Park. This assumption may not hold true for a number of reasons. First of all, the data collected in just one month may not be sufficient to reveal the trend of popularity of the park. More data over a number of months will be helpful to decide if Stanley Park was indeed less popular. Moreover, it is not clear why the number of cars recorded in the camera is a reliable indicator of the parks popularity. Given the fact that the number of visitors were counted to assess the popularity of Carlton Park, it seems to make more sense to count the number of visitors to Stanley Park as well. If the data from the camera could not accurately indicate the popularity of the Park, the argument would be significantly weakened due to its specious premise about the popularity of the park.
Another assumption being made is that the availability of ample seating was the main reason why Carlton Park was popular. To check this assumption, we may have to analyze the camera recordings more closely to see if the visitors spent a lot of their time socializing while sitting on the benches. On the other hand, there could be other factors that contributed to the popularity of Carlton Park. For example, the geographical location (being at the heart of the business district) could be the main reason for more visitors. If the ample seating was not the main factor related to park popularity, it would be groundless to recommend Stanley Park to provide more seats.