argument17 [Jet小组]第二次作业

alexznjUID: 2237357

ARGUMENT17 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Walnut Grove town newspaper. "Walnut Grove's town council has advocated switching from EZ Disposal (which has had the contract for trash collection services in Walnut Grove for the past ten years) to ABC Waste, because EZ recently raised its monthly fee from $2,000 to $2,500 a month, whereas ABC's fee is still $2,000. But the town council is mistaken; we should continue using EZ. EZ collects trash twice a week, while ABC collects only once. Moreover, EZ-which, like ABC, currently has a fleet of 20 trucks-has ordered additional trucks. Finally, EZ provides exceptional service: 80 percent of respondents to last year's town survey agreed that they were 'satisfied' with EZ's performance."


字数：391
In this argument, the arguer regards the switching of Disposal made by Walnut Grove's town council as mistaken for three reasons. However, there are at least three logical fallacies exist in the reasons.
First of all, though EA collects more frequently than ABC, we can not make a conclusion that EA collects more trash than ABC since the frequency does not mean its ability of collecting trash. ABC might collect more trash per week than EA notwithstanding it only collects once a week while EA collects twice. At least two reasons may cause this the supposition. One is that the staffs in ABC are more responsible and they always clear up all the trash without leaving any. The other reason is that maybe ABC uses more trucks to collect the trash than EA and it can dispose more trash than EA in spite it collects only once a week.
In addition, EA does in possession of more trucks than ABC, but the number of the trucks doesn’t equal to the ability of trash disposal. We may suppose that maybe the trucks ABC owns are all very big while all the trucks that EA possesses are very small which makes the arguer fails in making such a judgement.
The last but not the least, the percentage of satisfaction towards EA last year is not sufficient for showing that Walnut Grove should continue using EZ. On the one hand, the arguer doesn’t point out the component of the respondents in this investigation so the statistic is lack of persuasion. On the other hand, is 80% a high enough number to demonstrate the performance of a trash Disposal? We can’t find an answer from this argument. Finally, since the percentage of satisfaction towards the service of ABC is unknown so we can’t say that EA is better than ABC without the indispensable comparison.
It is correct for the town council to consider the economic factor when making decision. However, we would better to criticize other’s decision only after sufficient evidences have been shown to disprove his opinion.Thus, in this argument, though the switching of trash Disposal made by the town council is not appropriate, the arguer still can not make a conclusion that they are wrong only base on the reasons he mentions in his argument since they are not logically precise enough.

[ 本帖最后由 alexznj 于 2008-2-1 20:34 编辑 ]