Q17 - Zeida: Dr.Ladlow, a research psychologist

[jardinsouslapluie5]

Dr.L is not responsible psychologist.

Why?

Because
1. His theory is not conclusively proved
2. responsible psychologist always accept the possibility of incorrectness in their theory.

Okay.
I really really want to make this in a formal logic

L→/proved
RP→accept pos
--------------------
L→/RP

and becomes RP→accept pos→proved→/L???

And still get confused in answer (B).

[timmydoeslsat]

To avoid any confusion about B, we need to know what our objective is. In this case, we want an answer choice that is an inference, which is something that must be true.

Your post about this argument confuses me with this line, "RP→accept pos→proved→/L???"

I do not see any evidence that allows you to make this conditional chain.

Anson's argument is this:

Responsible Psych ---> Accept Poss. of NE showing theories incorrect

So this principle is used in anson's argument and concludes that Dr. Ladlow is not a responsible psychologist.

And this is something that is perfectly provable using this principle. We are shown that Dr. Ladlow does ~Accept Poss.

So everything looks great, we just want to select an answer choice that is something that must be true.

A) Cannot infer this. It could be true that his evidence is accurate. We just would have to accept the possibility that something in the future could disprove it.

B) Looks good. We know what is required of a responsible psychologist. We know that this type of person could never state that a certain theory cannot be disproven.

C) Same issue as A. Perhaps they can actually come across the correct one. They just have to keep an open mind that it may be disproven some day.

D) What too far. We only know one requirement of a responsible psychologist. Predictions can certainly still be made by responsible psychologists.

E) Logic reversal.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation. And I totally agree, if you see you're answering an "Inference" question, shift out of "deconstructing an argument" mode and into "which answer can I prove from the provided info" mode.

(Although it is true that when an Inference question stimulus contains an actual argument, the correct answer is normally a necessary assumption)

[yanyixin1120]

I understood the logic part, but I can still not get why B is correct. Or I should read it as "no one can conclude that those theories cannot be disproved"?

Thanks!