Midterm Practice
Sessions 1–7 · 84 items with answers
Write your answer and your reason before you open a box.
A correct label with the wrong reason is the most common way to pass practice and fail the paper. If you cannot say why, you have not answered the item.
These are not the exam items. Each is parallel in form to a real question but different in content. Scope is Sessions 1–7 only.
Part A — Label the claim: E (empirical) / C (conceptual) / N (normative) (15 items)
Rule of thumb to teach: ask “what would settle this?” Go and look → E. Agree what the word means → C. Argue about what matters → N.
A1. Mexico’s federal minimum wage rose in January 2025.
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E — A matter of record — look it up.
A2. Voter turnout in the last municipal election was 41%.
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E — Countable.
A3. More people live in Guadalajara than in Mérida.
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E — Census settles it.
A4. The company reported lower profits this year than last.
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E — Check the company’s published accounts.
A5. Three of the seven council members voted against the measure.
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E — A matter of record.
A6. By definition, a bicameral legislature has two chambers.
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C — Fixes what the term means.
A7. “Inflation” means a sustained rise in the general price level.
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C — A definition, not an observation.
A8. By definition, a referendum is a direct vote by the electorate on a single question.
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C — Signposted definition.
A9. By definition, a quorum is the minimum number of members needed to conduct business.
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C — Definitional.
A10. “Unemployed” means without work and actively seeking it.
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C — States the meaning of the term.
A11. The government should raise the minimum wage.
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N — The word should.
A12. Museums ought to return artefacts to their countries of origin.
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N — The word ought — and genuinely contested.
A13. Current penalties for tax evasion are too lenient.
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N — Too lenient is a value judgement.
A14. The new policy is unfair to small businesses.
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N — Unfair is a value word — no should required.
A15. Judges deserve stronger protection from political pressure.
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N — Deserve — a claim about what is owed.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Teaching note: A14 and A15 are the useful ones — normative claims that never say should. Students who learned “look for should” will mislabel them E.
Part B — Family and verdict (12 items)
Always stipulate: assume the stated premises are true. Then: deductive or inductive, and the verdict — sound, cogent, not sound, or not cogent.
B1. All triangles have three sides. This shape is a triangle. So it has three sides.
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deductive · sound — Valid, premises granted.
B2. All copper conducts electricity. This wire is copper. So this wire conducts electricity.
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deductive · sound — Valid, premises granted.
B3. Every prime greater than two is odd. Seventeen is a prime greater than two. So seventeen is odd.
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deductive · sound — Valid, premises granted.
B4. All doctors are university graduates. Ana is a university graduate. So Ana is a doctor.
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deductive · not sound — Invalid — graduates include non-doctors.
B5. All cats are mammals. All dogs are mammals. So all cats are dogs.
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deductive · not sound — Invalid — sharing a category is not being the same thing.
B6. If it snowed, the roads are closed. The roads are closed. So it snowed.
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deductive · not sound — Invalid — roads close for other reasons.
B7. This train has arrived on time every day for three years. So it will probably arrive on time tomorrow.
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inductive · cogent — Long, consistent record.
B8. In each of the last forty winters this lake has frozen. So it will probably freeze this winter.
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inductive · cogent — Forty cases, same place, same mechanism.
B9. A survey of 5,000 randomly selected voters found 62% support the measure. So most voters probably support it.
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inductive · cogent — Large random sample.
B10. I met two people from that city and both were rude. So people from that city are probably rude.
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inductive · not cogent — Two cases, no base rate.
B11. My team won the last three times I wore this scarf. So the scarf probably helps them win.
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inductive · not cogent — Three cases and no mechanism.
B12. One online review said the restaurant was bad. So it is probably bad.
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inductive · not cogent — A single unrepresentative report.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Also accept: neither (short for “neither sound nor cogent”), unsound for not sound, and weak for not cogent. Invalid alone is the right diagnosis but not one of the four words asked for — on the paper it earns partial credit only.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Teaching note: B4–B6 and B10–B12 are settled the moment the link fails — an invalid argument cannot be sound, a weak one cannot be cogent, and no premise-checking is needed. That asymmetry saves time on the paper.
Part C — Name the shape (15 items)
Name the shape, then say valid or trap.
Reference — the five shapes, in the words used in Session 5:
| Name | In class | The movement |
|---|---|---|
| modus ponens | Tool 1 | condition holds, so result follows |
| modus tollens | Tool 2 | result missing, so condition can’t hold |
| hypothetical syllogism | Tool 3 | two rules chain into one |
| affirming the consequent | Trap 1 | result happened, so this condition did |
| denying the antecedent | Trap 2 | condition absent, so result absent |
Either name is accepted — “Trap 1 · trap” and “denying the antecedent · trap” both earn full marks.
C1. If a student passes the final, they graduate. Diego passed. So Diego graduates.
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modus ponens · valid
C2. If the alarm is triggered, security is notified. The alarm was triggered. So security was notified.
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modus ponens · valid
C3. If a metal is heated, it expands. This metal was heated. So it expanded.
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modus ponens · valid
C4. If the package shipped, there is a tracking number. There is no tracking number. So it did not ship.
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modus tollens · valid
C5. If the engine were leaking, there would be oil on the ground. There is none. So it is not leaking.
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modus tollens · valid
C6. If she had studied, she would recognise the term. She did not recognise it. So she did not study.
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modus tollens · valid
C7. If it freezes, the pipes burst. If the pipes burst, the basement floods. So if it freezes, the basement floods.
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hypothetical syllogism · valid
C8. If demand rises, prices rise. If prices rise, imports increase. So if demand rises, imports increase.
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hypothetical syllogism · valid
C9. If a law passes, it is published. If it is published, it takes effect. So if a law passes, it takes effect.
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hypothetical syllogism · valid
C10. If it rained, the match was cancelled. The match was cancelled. So it rained.
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affirming the consequent · trap
C11. If the battery is dead, the car won’t start. The car won’t start. So the battery is dead.
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affirming the consequent · trap
C12. If a student cheated, they would score unusually high. This student scored unusually high. So they cheated.
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affirming the consequent · trap
C13. If she is the manager, she has keys. She is not the manager. So she does not have keys.
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denying the antecedent · trap
C14. If the bill passes, taxes go up. The bill did not pass. So taxes will not go up.
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denying the antecedent · trap
C15. If it is a virus, antibiotics won’t help. It is not a virus. So antibiotics will help.
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denying the antecedent · trap
Teaching note — reveals answers
Scoring: the verdict takes only valid or trap — invalid is the right diagnosis but not the word asked for, and it does not earn full marks.
Teaching note — reveals answers
The counterexample for every trap: name the other route. For C10–C12 — the match could be cancelled for snow; the car could fail for a dozen reasons; a strong student can also score high. For C13–C15 — the caretaker holds keys too; taxes can rise through a different bill; and if it is not a virus it may still be something antibiotics do nothing for, like a fungus. C15 is the hard one: the consequent is already negative, so read it slowly.
Part D — Name the fallacy (16 items)
Only the four from Session 7: false cause · circular reasoning · ad hominem · appeal to authority.
D1. Sales rose the month after we changed the logo. The logo is driving sales.
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false cause — Sequence offered as causation.
D2. The crops failed the year after the new irrigation system was installed. The system ruined the harvest.
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false cause — Weather, pests and soil are never ruled out.
D3. Since the new principal arrived, test scores have fallen. She is ruining the school.
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false cause — Nothing rules out other causes.
D4. The team has won every match since I started wearing this scarf. The scarf is helping.
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false cause — Coincidence dressed as cause. This is the scarf from B11: a weak induction and a false cause are often one passage seen from two angles, and the Part you are in tells you which label is wanted.
D5. The policy is effective because it works.
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circular reasoning — Effective and works are the same claim.
D6. She is the most qualified candidate because she is the best-qualified applicant.
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circular reasoning — Most qualified and best-qualified are the same claim.
D7. This translation is faithful because it renders the original faithfully.
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circular reasoning — Faithful = renders faithfully.
D8. Lying is immoral because it is morally wrong.
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circular reasoning — Exact synonyms.
D9. Her report on water quality can be dismissed — she has been divorced twice.
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ad hominem — Her marriage is irrelevant to water data.
D10. He argues the budget is unbalanced, but he failed math at school. Ignore him.
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ad hominem — Attacks his schooling, not the budget figures.
D11. The senator’s climate proposal isn’t worth reading — she inherited her money.
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ad hominem — Her wealth is not an answer to the proposal.
D12. The researcher’s findings on nutrition don’t matter — he is overweight.
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ad hominem — His body is not evidence about his data.
D13. A celebrated novelist says this diet cures arthritis, so it must be true.
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appeal to authority — Literary fame is not medical expertise.
D14. My dentist says the new tax plan will boost growth, so growth will rise.
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appeal to authority — Real expert, wrong field.
D15. A Nobel-winning chemist endorses this investment scheme, so it must be sound.
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appeal to authority — Chemistry is not finance.
D16. The CEO says the software is secure. He’s the CEO, so that settles it.
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appeal to authority — Rank substitutes for evidence.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Also accept for D13–D15: appeal to inappropriate authority, irrelevant authority. D16 is different — the CEO is not an irrelevant authority, he is rank standing in for evidence — so there accept appeal to authority or authority in place of evidence.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Teaching note: every circular item uses exact synonyms, so there is no room to argue the reason supplied independent support. Every ad hominem attacks a person while a real argument sits unanswered — that is what makes it the fallacy rather than mere rudeness.
Part E — The three-step diagnosis (10 items)
Name the move · quote the words · name two things you would check. The exam asks for exactly two and scores them 3 points each, so practise giving two — not one, not a list. “More data” earns nothing unless they say which data. Any quote that carries the causal leap counts — you need not pick the model’s words — but a paraphrase instead of a quote earns 1 of the 3. Writing four checks is not punished; only the best two are marked, so spend the time making two good ones.
E1. “Ice cream sales and drowning deaths both peak in July. Ice cream is causing the drownings.”
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→ false cause. Quote: “both peak in July… causing.”
→ What would settle it (name two): look for a common cause — hot weather drives both. Compare drownings in hot regions with low ice-cream sales.
E2. “After the city installed speed cameras, road deaths fell 20%. The cameras saved those lives.”
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→ false cause. Quote: “After the city installed… The cameras saved.”
→ What would settle it (name two): was the trend already falling? What happened on roads with no cameras? What about comparable cities that installed none?
E3. “Students who attend tutoring get better grades. Tutoring raises grades.”
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→ false cause. Quote: “Students who attend tutoring get better grades… raises.”
→ What would settle it (name two): who chooses tutoring? If it is mainly the motivated students who sign up, the gap was already there before the tutoring started. Compare similar students assigned at random.
E4. “Countries with more smartphones have higher GDP. Smartphones make countries rich.”
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→ false cause. Quote: “more smartphones… make countries rich.”
→ What would settle it (name two): the direction — did GDP rise before or after phones spread? A common cause — compare countries at similar income levels but different phone penetration; if GDP tracks income rather than phones, the correlation is doing no causal work.
E5. “This medicine is effective because it produces good results.”
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→ circular reasoning. Quote: “effective because it produces good results.”
→ What would settle it (name two): a trial against a placebo with the outcome fixed in advance — recovery time, say — so the claim can be proved wrong. Whether patients who never took it recovered at the same rate over the same period.
E6. “The witness is reliable because his testimony can be trusted.”
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→ circular reasoning. Quote: “reliable because… can be trusted.”
→ What would settle it (name two): evidence that does not come from him — security-camera footage, phone records, receipts, a second witness. His track record: has his past testimony been checked against independently established facts, and did it hold?
E7. “The clinic’s worst month for readmissions was January. We introduced a new checklist in February and readmissions fell. The checklist fixed it.”
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→ false cause. Quote: “introduced a new checklist… The checklist fixed it.”
→ What would settle it (name two): the months before January — was January an unusual peak that would have fallen back whatever anyone did? A comparable clinic that introduced no checklist over the same months.
E8. “Every one of the ten most successful founders we interviewed left university early. Leaving university early helps you succeed.”
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→ false cause. Quote: “Every one of the ten most successful… helps you succeed.”
→ What would settle it (name two): what became of everyone who left university early — the ones who failed were never interviewed. The success rate of comparable people who stayed and finished.
E9. “Ignore the epidemiologist’s estimate of hospital capacity — she once ran for office as a party candidate.”
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→ ad hominem. Quote: “Ignore the epidemiologist’s estimate… she once ran for office.”
→ What would settle it (name two): does her candidacy touch the capacity figures — check her method and inputs against the hospital’s own returns. Has anyone answered the estimate itself, or only the person?
E10. “A Nobel-winning physicist says this diet reverses diabetes, so it does.”
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→ appeal to authority. Quote: “A Nobel-winning physicist says… so it does.”
→ What would settle it (name two): is he speaking inside his own field — physics is not medicine. What do diabetes researchers and published trials say?
Teaching note — reveals answers
Teaching note — the two checks are not the same two every time. E1–E4 and E7–E8 are false cause, and the checks are always rival explanations: a common cause, a trend already running, who selected in, the arrow pointing the other way, a peak that was going to fall back, the failures nobody interviewed. E5–E6 are circular, and the checks are different in kind — both must point at evidence from outside the claim, something the claim could fail against. Restating the definition in other words earns nothing. E9–E10 are the person-and-authority moves, and the checks change again: does the trait actually bear on the claim, has anyone answered the argument itself, and is the authority speaking inside their own field?
Teaching note — reveals answers
Also accept for the name in step one of a false-cause item: post hoc, correlation mistaken for causation.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Do not let a student learn “Part E means false cause.” The three steps are set on whichever move the passage commits.
Part F — Reconstruct in standard form (6 items)
*Each states one premise and hides a normative bridge. The hidden premise must be general
F1. “Single-use plastics should be banned — they take centuries to decompose.”
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| P1. | Single-use plastics take centuries to decompose. (E) |
| P2. | (unstated) We should ban things that take centuries to decompose. (N) |
| C. | Single-use plastics should be banned. |
F2. “The library should be open after 9 p.m. — most students study after 9 p.m.”
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| P1. | Most students study after 9 p.m. (E) |
| P2. | (unstated) The library should be open when most students study. (N) |
| C. | The library should be open after 9 p.m. |
F3. “This bridge must be repaired — engineers found cracks in three support columns.”
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| P1. | Engineers found cracks in three support columns. (E) |
| P2. | (unstated) Bridges with cracked support columns must be repaired. (N) |
| C. | This bridge must be repaired. |
F4. “We should not hire him — he was dismissed from his last two jobs.”
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| P1. | He was dismissed from his last two jobs. (E) |
| P2. | (unstated) We should not hire people dismissed from their last two jobs. (N) |
| C. | We should not hire him. |
F5. “Cigarette advertising should be banned — it increases smoking among teenagers.”
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| P1. | Cigarette advertising increases smoking among teenagers. (E) |
| P2. | (unstated) We should ban what increases teenage smoking. (N) |
| C. | Cigarette advertising should be banned. |
F6. “Night flights should be restricted — they wake thousands of residents.”
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| P1. | Night flights wake thousands of residents. (E) |
| P2. | (unstated) We should restrict what wakes thousands of residents. (N) |
| C. | Night flights should be restricted. |
Teaching note — reveals answers
What earns nothing (F1): “Single-use plastics are things we should ban.” That is the conclusion in other clothes. The bridge must be general — about anything that takes centuries to decompose, not about plastics.
Teaching note — reveals answers
The rule behind all six: the conclusion is a should or a must — a demand, not a description — and no stack of facts delivers one. So the unstated premise is always N. Mark the E/C/N label against the premise the student actually wrote, not against the model answer.
Part G — Readings (3 sets × 4 = 12 items)
Gist only. No item turns on a technical term. A student who read each piece once will place all four; one who memorised a definition without reading will not. Each set leaves one option over, so the fourth answer cannot be had by elimination — the same shape as the paper.
The seven required readings, Sessions 1–7:
| Session | Reading |
|---|---|
| 1 | Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection” |
| 2 | Plato, Euthyphro |
| 3 | Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk III Pt I §I |
| 4 | Hume, Enquiry §IV, “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding” |
| 5 | Vaughn & MacDonald, Ch. 3, “Making sense of arguments” |
| 6 | Kahneman, “The Characters of the Story” |
| 7 | Vaughn & MacDonald, Ch. 5, “Fallacies and persuaders” |
Hempel is optional on Session 4 and Schopenhauer belongs to Session 10. The paper covers required readings from Sessions 1–7 only, so neither is examinable.
How the sets are built — the rule that keeps them unambiguous. No set repeats an author or a book, and no decoy names a topic an author in that set actually wrote about. Gist-level options are the point: they reward reading over memorising a gloss. What stops a loose option from fitting two readings at once is the distinctness of the four readings in the set, never how specific the wording is. Hume and Vaughn each supply two of the seven readings, so the two Hume pieces must never share a set, and neither must the two Vaughn chapters.
Set 1
- Plato, Euthyphro
____ - Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III
____ - Vaughn & MacDonald, “Making sense of arguments”
____ - Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection”
____
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- Plato, Euthyphro → a
- Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III → c
- Vaughn & MacDonald, “Making sense of arguments” → d
- Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection” → b
Left over: (e).
Set 2
- Kahneman, “The Characters of the Story”
____ - Hume, “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding”
____ - Vaughn & MacDonald, “Fallacies and persuaders”
____ - Plato, Euthyphro
____
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- Kahneman, “The Characters of the Story” → b
- Hume, “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding” → d
- Vaughn & MacDonald, “Fallacies and persuaders” → a
- Plato, Euthyphro → e
Left over: (c).
Set 3
- Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection”
____ - Hume, “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding”
____ - Kahneman, “The Characters of the Story”
____ - Vaughn & MacDonald, “Making sense of arguments”
____
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- Sagan, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection” → d
- Hume, “Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding” → c
- Kahneman, “The Characters of the Story” → e
- Vaughn & MacDonald, “Making sense of arguments” → b
Left over: (a).
Teaching note — reveals answers
Scoring, as on the paper: 4 correct = 6 pts · 3 correct = 4 · 2 correct = 2 · 0–1 = 0.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Teaching note: the wording of the options changes between sets on purpose. A student who memorised one phrase for Kahneman will meet a different phrase on the paper — what is tested is whether they read the piece, not whether they memorised a gloss. If a student can only place a reading when the option repeats a phrase from the slide, they have not read it.
Teaching note — reveals answers
Exam strategy worth saying out loud: nothing is deducted for a wrong match, and one option is always a decoy. A student who is sure of three should still place the fourth rather than leave it blank — but they should place it on what they remember of the reading, not by elimination, because elimination is exactly what the decoy defeats.