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题目:ARGUMENT 67 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a newspaper serving the villages of Castorville and Polluxton.
"Both the villages of Castorville and Polluxton have experienced sharp declines in the numbers of residents who pay property taxes. To save money and improve service, the two villages recently merged their once separate garbage collection departments into a single department located in Castorville, and the new department has reported few complaints about its service. Last year the library in Polluxton had 20 percent fewer users than during the previous year. It follows that we should now further economize and improve service, as we did with garbage collection, by closing the library in Polluxton and using the library in Castorville to serve both villages."
字数:558words
In this argument, the arguer draws the ratiocination that the two libraries should be merged into one by closing the one in Polluxton to save money and improve service. It sounds reasonable for being backed up by the evidence that the merging of two separate garbage collection department seems to be successful. In my point of view, however, several critical flaws concealed in the argument will be unveiled after a closer inspection on it.
First and for most, the arguer commits a fallacy of hasty generation even if there is few complaints about the service of garbage collection. Perhaps that the residents in the two villages are not satisfied with the new garbage collection actually, but the new department has not yet received any feedback because it has been set up recently. Another possibility is that the department has received the complaints already, but it does not report to the public. Provided that few complaints about the service, the author fails to furnish us with a shred of evidence to prove that this new project help save money. Unless ruling out all the above possibility, any conclusion is arbitrary.
In the second place, the author assumes unreasonable analogue between the garbage collection department and library without justification. As is known to all that the service needed in garbage collection and libraries are utterly different. The residents may be satisfied only if the garbage collection department can collect their garbage regularly. However, given that the library is too far from their homes, even the best service is useless. What the residents’ request of a library is not only good service but also abundant resources. Therefore, merging the two libraries may cause complaint rather than satisfaction. Without taking the advices and suggestions from residents of the two villages, the author cannot confidently draw a conclusion.
Moreover, the author fails to inform us the reason why the number of users of the library in P declined. If it is because that the library did not bring in new books that the readers wanted to borrow or to borrow a book charged more than ever, merging the two libraries into one makes little difference. Consequently, it is not save for the author to make any decision before clarifying the reason why the number of the library’s user is less than last year.
Finally, the argument seems to be too presumptuous that the library should be closed in Polluxton rather than the one in Castorville. Even if merging the two libraries into one is feasible, it does not inevitably closing the library in P while remain the one in C. Maybe there are more books in P that make removing to C more difficult. Or perhaps that there are more people who favor reading books in P than that in C. In this circumstance, given the library moving to C, there would be even less users of library. So the conclusion is premature without taking the different conditions of the two villages into account.
To sum up, the argument is complete with several vital fallacies. To buttress it, it is strongly recommendable for the author to find out the reason why the users of library are less than last year, and ensure that closing the one in P and using the one in C is feasible and can bring the users more convenience. |
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