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Critical Thinking 12th Edition by Brooke Noel Moore - Test Bank
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Complete Critical Thinking 12th Edition by Brooke Noel Moore Complete Test Bank
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1. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
Will a beverage begin to cool more quickly in the freezer or in the regular part of the refrigerator? Well, of course it’ll cool faster in the freezer!
There are lots of people who don’t understand anything at all about physics and who think things may begin to cool faster in the fridge. But they’re
sadly mistaken.
No argument. Clearly, our speaker has an opinion on the subject, but no argument is given.
2. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
It’s true that you can use your television set to tell when a tornado is approaching. The reason is that tornadoes make an electrical disturbance in the
55 megahertz range, which is close to the band assigned to channel 2. If you know how to do it, you can get your set to pick up the current given off
by the twister. So your television set can be your warning device that tells you when to dive for the cellar.
—Adapted from Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope
This passage might be taken as an explanation, but it is also an argument, since it is clearly designed to convince us that its main point is correct.
3. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
Some of these guys who do Elvis Presley imitations actually pay more for their outfits than Elvis paid for his! Anybody who would spend thousands
just so he can spend a few minutes not fooling anybody into thinking he’s Elvis is nuts.
No argument. No connection is made between the cost of the outfits and the psychological deficiencies of Elvis impersonators.
4. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"The argument advanced at a recent government hearing—that because we will not be dependent on plutonium for more than a few hundred years it
‘will not be an important problem indefinitely’—entirely misses the point. Though we may rely on plutonium for only a relatively brief period, the
plutonium produced during that period may be with us indefinitely, and it may jeopardize the lives of many times the number of generations that
profit from its use."
—Ronald M. Green, "International Justice and Environmental Responsibility"
Argument.
5. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"Gene splicing is the most awesome and powerful skill acquired by man since the splitting of the atom. If pursued humanistically, its potential to
serve humanity is enormous. We will use it to synthesize expensive natural products—interferon, substances such as insulin, and human endorphins
that serve as natural painkillers. We will be able to create a second ‘green revolution’ in agriculture to produce new high-yield, disease-resistant, self-
fertilizing crops. Gene splicing has the potential to synthesize new substances we can substitute for oil, coal, and other raw materials—keys to a self-
sustaining society."
—John Naisbitt, Megatrends
Argument.
6. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
Computers will never be able to converse intelligently through speech. A simple example proves that this is so. The sentences "How do you
recognize speech?" and "How do you wreck a nice beach?" sound just the same when they are spoken, but they mean something different. A
computer could not distinguish the two.
Argument.
7. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
You’d better not pet that dog. She looks friendly, but she’s been known to bite.
Argument.
8. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
It is obvious why some men have trouble understanding why women become upset over pornography. Pornography depicts women as servants or
slaves, and men cannot conceive of themselves in this role.
Argument.
,9. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
I don’t care how well Thompson played last week. If he misses practice one more time, he’s not going to play in the tournament, and that’s that.
No argument. The speaker is only making a firm claim, not supporting it with reasons.
10. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
Except maybe for finance and business law, schools of business really don’t have very much of their own subject matter to teach to students. All the
rest is really mathematics, psychology, English, speech, and other standard subjects that business schools call by other names.
Argument.
11. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
Right now there are as many as half a million military-style assault guns in the hands of private citizens in the United States. These small, light, easy-
to-handle weapons are exemplified by the Israeli UZI, the American MAC-10 and AR-15, and the KG-99. All of these are sophisticated weapons
manufactured for the single purpose of killing human beings in large numbers very quickly.
No argument.
12. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are
of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."
—John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
No argument.
13. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"The personal computer revolution is marked by accidental discoveries. The entire market for these things was a big surprise to all the pioneers who
put simple ads in hobbyist magazines and were stunned by an onslaught of eager customers."
—John C. Dvorak
No argument.
14. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"The main danger of war, even of a war fought with conventional weapons, lies in its unpredictability."
—Anatoly Gromyko, "Security for All in the Nuclear Age," in Breakthrough
No argument.
15. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"The recent failure of a Drake University student to halt his former girlfriend’s plan for an abortion focuses light on a seldom considered situation:
While a woman’s right to an abortion should not be weakened, the idea of ‘fathers’ rights’ raised in this case should be discussed."
—The Daily Iowan
No argument.
16. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"If American business is to regain an advantageous position in the international marketplace, it must recreate a climate of flexibility and
entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the trend is to seek personal success not through entrepreneurship but through professionalism, as a continued climb
in the number of advanced degrees in business and law confirms. If this tendency to seek personal security and prestige by joining the ranks of the
professionally comfortable continues, the real winners will be America’s overseas competitors."
—Irving Greenberg
Argument.
17. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body and a mind. Bodies are in space and subject to the mechanical laws that govern all
other bodies in space. But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws. Bodily processes and states can be inspected by
external observers, but the workings of one mind are not witnessable by other observers. And so a person lives through two collateral histories; but
, the actual transactions between the episodes of the private history and those of the public history remain mysterious, since by definition they can
belong to neither series.
—Adapted from Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind
Argument.
18. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"[Lionel L.] Lewis discovered that, in recommendations of merit written by administrators and faculty themselves, although they put much emphasis
(two-thirds) upon student related activities—teaching, advising, course planning, and popularity—no one argues from any supporting evidence other
than, ‘Everyone knows.’"
—David A. Downes, "The Merit Muddle in the University"
No argument.
19. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
The president has the morals of an alley cat, his critics say. Shows you what they know. He’ll still be reelected.
No argument.
20. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"Today, there is strong evidence—not only in theory but in practice—that families who try to protect dying children from knowing they’re dying
rarely serve the child’s best interests. This conspiracy of silence, however well-meaning, often puts nurses, relatives, and others who spend the most
time with the patient, especially in their lonely moments, on the spot."
—Thomas Scully and Celia Scully, Playing God: The New World of Medical Choices
Argument.
21. Determine whether the following passage is (or contains) an argument.
"The Federal Reserve Board is normally the Stealth bomber of government agencies, zooming in without warning to raise or lower interest rates and
confirming weeks later what action was taken. But last Friday, in an extraordinary pre-emptive strike against a possible surge of inflation, the Federal
Reserve Chairman declared that the Central Bank had raised short-term rates that very day."
No argument.
22. Identify each speaker that gives an argument for his or her position in the following passage.
Larry: Before we go to Hawaii, let’s go to a tanning salon and get a tan. Then we won’t look like we just got off the plane, plus we won’t get
sunburned while we’re over there.
Laurie: I don’t know . . . I read that those places can be dangerous. And did you ever check out how much they cost? Let’s let it go.
Larry and Laurie are both giving arguments.
23. Identify each speaker that gives an argument for his or her position in the following passage.
Student A: My family is very conservative. I don’t think they’d like it if they found out that I was sharing an apartment with two males.
Student B: But sooner or later you have to start living your own life.
Both A and B are giving arguments. B is arguing for an unstated claim: You should share the apartment with the two males despite what your family
would like.
24. Identify each speaker that gives an argument for his or her position in the following passage.
Insurance Exec: Insurance costs so much because accident victims hire you lawyers to take us insurers to court and soak us for all we’re worth. There
should be limits on the amounts insurance companies may be required to pay out on claims.
Attorney: Limits? Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. What if someone’s medical expenses exceed those limits? Do we just say, "Sorry, Charlie?"
Only Attorney is giving an argument.
25. Identify each speaker that gives an argument for his or her position in the following passage.
Republican: If taxes absolutely must be raised, raise the sales tax. Raising taxes on corporations or income taxes just drives businesses out of state,
and that’s bad for the economy. The net result is less tax revenue for government.
Democrat: If you raise the sales tax, people buy less, and that’s even worse for the economy. Besides, the sales tax hits poor people the hardest, and
they are the ones who least can afford a tax hike.
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