argument 14 求改~~

pavUID: 2667136

argument 14       The following appeared in a memo from the owner of Green Thumb Gardening Center, a small business serving a suburban town. “There is evidence that consumers are becoming more and more interested in growing their own vegetables. A national survey conducted last month indicated that many consumers were dissatisfied with the quality of fresh vegetables available in supermarkets. And locally, the gardening magazine GreatGardens has sold out at the Village News stand three months in a row. Thus, we at Green Thumb Gardening Center can increase our profits by greatly expanding the variety of vegetable seeds we stock for gardeners this coming spring."





Grounded on the unwarranted assumption that local people are more and more interested in growing vegetables by themselves and several suspicious evidences such as more and more people are unsatisfied with the vegetables in the supermarkets, and magazines about gardening is popular,the author suggests that the green thumb gardening center should expanding thevariety of the seeds they provide. This suggestion sounds advisable; however,it suffers from several logical flaws as follows.

First of all, the author commits the fallacy of change scopes. There is no guarantee that the nationwide result can still be applied to the town. It is entirely possible that local supermarkets do provide favorable fresh vegetables and people are quite satisfied with that.Or maybe local just do not care about the quality of the fresh vegetables due to several reasons. Therefore, without ruling out these possibilities, the decision can not be made.

Secondly, the logical fallacy of false dilemma undermines the credibility of the argument. even if we concede that theresult of that survey can be applied to the specific town, that is, people arereally unsatisfied with the vegetables from the supermarkets,they do not necessarily need to grow vegetables themselves.they have other alternatives. For examples,they can complain this situation to the supermarkets and the supermarkets maytake steps to solve the problems. Or they can buy the vegetables from the nearby villages directly. Maybe they just think growing vegetables themselves will be too troublesome and they may not have enough area to grow the vegetables.

What is more, the phenomenon that the gardening magazines sell well in the village news stand is insufficient tobolster the author’s idea.the author does not tell us any information about the content of the magazines; maybe it is mainly about growing flowers, which hasnothing to do with vegetables. Also, people maybe just like the style and thepictures of the magazines. They appreciate the lifestyle in the magazines, but they are not willing to practice.

Finally, to expand the variety of the seeds is a complicated action because it involves taking all the conditions into consideration. Whether can the company increase the profit or not depend onmany aspects like the difficulty of buying the new seeds, and the acceptance ofnew items among local people.

To sum up, unless the author can provide more details about these evidences that are able to rule out the possibilities discussed before, the company should not make any conclusion.