The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a food distribution company with food storage warehouses in several cities.
“Recently, we signed a contract with the Fly-Away Pest Control Company to provide pest control services at our fast-food warehouse in Palm City, but last month we discovered that over $20,000 worth of food there had been destroyed by pest damage. Meanwhile, the Buzzoff Pest Control Company, which we have used for many years, continued to service our warehouse in Wintervale, and last month only $10,000 worth of the food stored there had been destroyed by pest damage. Even though the price charged by Fly-Away is considerably lower, our best means of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all our pest control services.”
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
五問:
(1)“our best means of saving money is to return to Buzzoff for all our pest control services”是結論,其余部分是事實,值得反駁嗎?
(2)本題屬于典型的類比式題目:我們應該考慮類比的雙方所具備的條件是否相同,你能試著羅列幾個不同的因素嗎?例如, Fly-Away與Buzzoff兩家公司所處的環(huán)境是相同的嗎?它們是否在同一個城市呢?不同城市之間是否可能在諸多方面都不相同?在不知道兩地的貨物總量也就是損失的比例的情況下,能說 Fly-Away的 pest damage程度更嚴重嗎?讓 Buzzoff到 Fly-Away所在的城市去工作,是否可能干得比 Fly-Away更加糟糕?
(3)原文將對比的時間限定在“ last month”,是合適的嗎?過去一個月是如此,以后的所有時間之內就都會如此嗎?請大家回顧基礎理論中關于時間軸論證的錯誤。
(4)即便 Buzzoff的服務真的更為優(yōu)秀(事實可能并非如此),為了省錢,我們真的應該選擇 Buzzoff嗎?選擇 Buzzoff所增加的成本是否可能比因蟲害損失的成本還要高?原文是否提供了足夠的信息來證明這一點?
(5)原文最后一句話說要把 all our pest control services都交給 Buzzoff,這樣的舉措是合理的嗎?原文中是否僅僅比對了兩個地點?這兩個地點可以代表所有的樣本嗎? Fly-Away在其他地區(qū)提供的 pest control services是否有可能比 Buzzoff更好?