If I throw a glass at a brick wall with sufficient force?

it will break and fall to the ground in pieces. I


can predict this outcome with near certainty, because the cause and its almost invariable effect


are well known. But no-one can predict with any kind of certainty the number or shape of the


fragments into which the glass will break, or explain afterwards why it shattered in the particular


way that it did. So whereas the fact that the glass breaks has a clear and obvious cause, the


particular way in which it shatters has no cause at all: it is completely random.


Which of the following is the best expression of the flaw in the reasoning?


A Being able to predict something does not mean that I know what caused it to happen.


B Knowing the cause of something does not mean that it is certain to happen.


C Being able to predict something if I know its cause, does not mean that if I can't predict it it


has no cause.


D Knowing what has always happened in the past does not mean I can predict what will


happen in the future.

If I throw a glass at a brick wall with sufficient force?
Justification





The key is C.





The argument goes too far in claiming that my inability to predict an outcome means it has no cause.


The most that follows from the argument is that I don’t know its cause. C identifies this fallacious


claim. None of the others identifies claims made in the passage.





Distractors





A The argument does conclude that I know the cause from my ability to predict.


B There is no claim that any event is certain to happen because its cause is known.


D This would be a flaw if the argument drew such a conclusion, but it does not.
Reply:The flaw in your reasoning is that it's not random. The glass will break in a certain way. While that way may not be particularly easy to deduce, it is possible if one were to examine the stress microfractures throughout the object and do a very complex structural analysis. It would take a substantial knowledge of Physics to do such a thing, but it is by all means possible.





There are very few things in this world that are truly random. The roll of a dice is merely a function of its initial position in someone's hand coupled with the forces enacted upon it by the surrounding system. Flipping a coin is exactly the same. Computers, incapable of producing random numbers, run an assigned number (called the "seed") through an equation designed to give thousands or millions of different results before repeating. If you know the seed, equation, and number of iterations, you know exactly what numbers will come up.





But I digress. From what I can tell, the answer you're looking for is A.
Reply:E. Glass comes in all densities and breaks differently, no matter how hard you throw it.


D is good
Reply:a,b,c,d are too vague to be considered answers. They are philosophical and not of science. The answer lies within the realms of geometry.