Argument137 [天道酬勤小组]第七次作业

yaoqian0424UID: 2323517

TOPIC: ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.

"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
WORDS: 422          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2007-7-12 下午 07:19:35

The arguer asserts that the government of Mason City(MC) should increase its budget to improve the publicly owned lands along the Mason River(MR) since the residents would increasingly engage into the recreational activity in MR after the clean-up plan is carried out by the agency responsible for rivers. This argument seems tempting at the first sight, however, it relies on a series unsubstantiated assumptions and fallacies that would undermine the logic of this argument.

First of all, the mere fact indicated by a survey that residents consistently view water sports as a favorite form of recreation would lends insufficient support to conclude that residents would choose MR as the very place for entertainment. Maybe it is the case that people in MC do prefer to water sports such as swimming, fishing, and boating, however, there might have many other alternative places for them to have water sports that the MR may probably be among the myriads choices rather than the only place available to be used for recreational activity. For instance, there may be various swimming pools and fishing clubs as well as beautiful lakes that are right beside residents’ hands. It might also be the case that MR are too far away from the living community that residents may not stand on driving several hours here just for sports. Failing to rule out such alternatives, the author can not convince us that residents would surely use MR for recreational activity for their preference on water sports.

In addition, the author depends on the questionable assumption that people do not go to MR for entertainment at present just because the poor quality of the water in the river, thus, to access to the conclusion that cleaning up the water in river would contribute to attract people to return for water sports. In fact, people may have diverse reasons for their absence in MR. For example; people nowadays are occupied on work. Hardly can they take time off their full schedule to have a release, let along having water sports in MR. Or the climate around MR is often unsuitable for people to swim without any equipment for heating the water. Or there are less fish left for people to catch. Taking into account the above possible cases, the plan aiming to clean up the water in MR may be probably of no value to draw people's attention to play in MR. Therefore, we can not access to the confident assertion that people would turn to MR for entertainment given the water would be cleaned up with the implement of a plan constructed by agency in charge of the river.

Another serious fallacy the author commits refer to the falsely drawn causal relationship between the increased recreational use of MR and the necessity for the MC council to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the MR. The argument provide no evidence to confirm this causal relationship. Maybe the construction of the publicly owned lands has already good enough to address the needs of the increasing recreational use, in which case, there is no sense to engage in improvement. Perhaps the sufficient private investment from corporation and enterprise would also play the same role as government. So it is not necessary for MC council to invest in those lands.

In sum, the argument lacks credibility because the insufficient evidence cited in analysis does not lend strong supports to what the author maintain. To evaluate the argument efficiently, the author should investigate the exact reason for people's absence to MR for water sports and should engage in a widely drawn survey to figure out if people would probably come to MR for entertainment if the quality of water have been enhanced and also the author should get down to observe the necessity for city council to increase budget for improvement the publicly owned lands along the MR.

surreal_stevenUID: 2239190

The arguer asserts that the government of Mason City(MC) should increase its budget to improve the publicly owned lands along the Mason River(MR) since the residents would increasingly engage into the recreational activity in MR after the clean-up plan is carried out by the agency responsible for rivers. This argument seems tempting at the first sight, however, it relies on a series unsubstantiated assumptions and fallacies that would undermine the logic of this argument. 感觉开头还可以再简洁一点^_^

First of all, the mere fact indicated by a survey that residents consistently view water sports as a favorite form of recreation would lends insufficient support to conclude that residents would choose MR as the very place for entertainment. Maybe it is the case that people in MC do prefer to water sports such as swimming, fishing, and boating, however, there might have many other alternative places for them to have water sports that the MR may probably be among the myriads choices rather than the only place available to be used for recreational activity. For instance, there may be various swimming pools and fishing clubs as well as beautiful lakes that are right beside residents’ hands. It might also be the case that MR are too far away from the living community that residents may not stand on driving several hours here just for sports.题目中有讲MR就在居民区附近。Failing to rule out such alternatives, the author can not convince us that residents would surely use MR for recreational activity for their preference on water sports.

In addition, the author depends on the questionable assumption that people do not go to MR for entertainment at present just because the poor quality of the water in the river, thus, to access to the conclusion that cleaning up the water in river would contribute to attract people to return for water sports. In fact, people may have diverse reasons for their absence in MR. For example; people nowadays are occupied on work. Hardly can they take time off their full schedule to have a release, let along having water sports in MR. Or the climate around MR is often unsuitable for people to swim without any equipment for heating the water. Or there are less fish left for people to catch. Taking into account the above possible cases, the plan aiming to clean up the water in MR may be probably of no value to draw people's attention to play in MR. Therefore, we can not access to the confident assertion that people would turn to MR for entertainment given the water would be cleaned up with the implement of a plan constructed by agency in charge of the river.

Another serious fallacy the author commits refer to the falsely drawn causal relationship between the increased recreational use of MR and the necessity for the MC council to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the MR. The argument provide no evidence to confirm this causal relationship. Maybe the construction of the publicly owned lands has already good enough to address the needs of the increasing recreational use, in which case, there is no sense to engage in improvement. Perhaps the sufficient private investment from corporation and enterprise would also play the same role as government. So it is not necessary for MC council to invest in those lands.

In sum, the argument lacks credibility because the insufficient evidence cited in analysis does not lend strong supports to what the author maintain. To evaluate the argument efficiently, the author should investigate the exact reason for people's absence to MR for water sports and should engage in a widely drawn survey to figure out if people would probably come to MR for entertainment if the quality of water have been enhanced and also the author should get down to observe the necessity for city council to increase budget for improvement the publicly owned lands along the MR.


这篇文章649字啊，不是422，都在30mins内搞定的？打字速度牛啊～～


语言流畅，这个没问题，只是感觉还可以再简洁一点，特别是反驳段最后的那几句说明作者unconvincing 的话，这些其实都是套话，点到就好了。还有结尾我觉得太长了，可以把重点放在充实反例和反驳上，毕竟考场时间有限。后两个反驳点和我的相同，可以看看我的，相互启发。还有我觉得survey是argu中必驳的逻辑错误，就算还有其他明显的错误，也最好点到survey

前段时间整理提纲，作业不太正常，现在恢复了，今后会多来拍你的文章，呵呵

麻烦拍拍我的烂文 argu137 https://bbs.gter.net/viewthread.php?tid=702894&extra=page%3D1






[ 本帖最后由 surreal_steven 于 2007-7-15 12:39 编辑 ]