A177关于begging the question留链互拍

hanyuanUID: 2219299

"Membership in Oak City's Civic Club-a club whose primary objective is to discuss local issues-should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak City. People who work in Oak City but who live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city. It is important to restrict membership to city residents because only residents pay city taxes and therefore only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. At any rate, restricting membership in this way is unlikely to disappoint many of the nonresidents employed in Oak City, since neighboring Elm City's Civic Club has always had an open membership policy, and only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm City's Club in the last ten years."
WORDS: 431          TIME: 0:30:10          DATE: 2006-7-26

In this argument, the author recommends that Membership in Oak City's Civic Club-a club whose primary objective is to discuss local issues-should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak City. He cites a line of reasons to support his recommendation. This argument bases on several gratuitous assumptions, which render it unpersuasive as it stands.

The first assumption of the author is that to understand the business and politics of the city truly, one should live in this city. Yet the author provides no evidence the reason of this claim, thus he commits a fallacy of begging the question. The understanding of the city's business and politics actually has nothing to do with one's living place. It is entirely possible the case that outsiders would bring more fresh ideas in another perspective and it is important to listen to voices coming from outside for residents living in local. Maybe the outsiders can provide more information the resident relying on to solve the local problems with the comparison between local area and outside areas based on the information from outsiders.

The second assumption of the author is that to understand the money how the money could best be used to improve the city one should pay city taxes. Yet we have no idea why this is necessary the case. As the old saying goes, the out lookers see most clearly. It is entirely possible that the residents who pay city taxes know nothing about the money distribution while those who have not paid truly know how to use the money properly.

Thirdly, the merely fact that only a 25 nonresidents have joined Elm City's Club in the last ten years is little convince that nonresidents do not care about the local circs. It is entirely possible that the population of nonresidents in Elm City is small in Oak City and therefore 25 people stands for a large proportion of the nonresidents in Elm City. Or perhaps these 25 nonresidents are representative of the overall nonresidents in Elm City therefore it is enough to represent the nonresidents' thoughts to the local leaders. Either scenario would disserve the author's assertion that the nonresidents would not disappoint because of the closing policy toward outsiders.

Moreover, the author unfairly assumes that the conditions in the two cities he used to make the comparison are alike. It is entirely possible that Oak City is a larger city and consists of more proportion of nonresidents from outside. If this is the case, closing policy towards them would inevitably cause upset and disappointing, which is harmful for the city's prosperity.

To the sum, the author make the unfairly comparison between two different cities and a line of gratuitous assumptions to support his recommendation. The argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To better support his claim, he should make more investigate to the local people and make sure their opinions.