June 2007 PrepTest, Section 3, Question 20
By Brandon Beaver | Published October 29, 2024
Type: Parallel Reasoning
Difficulty:
Explanations
Ah, an ad hominem attack (attacking the person making the argument, instead of the argument itself). The argument basically says, “we should do X, because people opposing X are big fat meanies who are against everything good in the world! Not doing X is what hurts all the good in the world!”
A
No ad hominem (personal attack) here, so this is out.
B
Same as A.
C
Yup, this is an ad hominem attack: You shouldn’t do X because people saying to do X are greedy and self-interested! This is a match, so this is the answer.
D
Still no ad hominem.
E
Same as A, B, and D. As it turns out, none of the wrong answers had anything close to a personal attack. If you recognized the ad hominem flaw in the original passage, then you should have smashed this question.
Passage
We should accept the proposal to demolish the old train stat
Question 20
The flawed reasoning exhibited by the argument above is most