(Test Bank) Critical Thinking

Moore, 13

Political Science

Test Bank

13th Edition

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Test Bank for Critical Thinking, The downloadable file consists of 607 pages, and the total size of the file is 2.55 MB. Purchase now only for highly discounted price.

Author(s): Moore

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Study Note Preview

Version 1 1 CHAPTER 1 1) "The president’s basic problem, in my opinion, is that she is too unemotional. She makes all her decisions on cold logic and seems to ignore the human dimension. If you don’t believe me, I offer as proof the way she withdrew her support for her brother-in-law when he was charged with tax evasion. After that, he couldn’t get elected dog catcher." Which of the following best states the primary issue discussed in the passage? A) whether the president should have withdrawn support for her brother-in-law B) whether you should believe me about the president C) whether the president has a serious problem D) whether the president is too unemotional 2) "With genetically different animals, there’s always the possibility that the results of experiments are due to variations among animals rather than to whatever is being tested. Genetically identical research animals would therefore be a boon to research because scientists could be more confident of their research results." Which of the following best states the primary issue discussed in the passage? A) whether scientists need to be more confident of their research results B) whether genetically identical research animals would be a boon to research C) whether results of experiments are due to variations among animals or to whatever is being tested D) whether experimentation on animals should continue 3) "I think there should be a speed limit for the 'spandex' bicycle racers that feel the need to run those of us that don’t ride or walk as fast off the road and into the bushes in Bidwell Park. The park is for everyone’s pleasure and enjoyment, and more often than not it is spoiled by those few who feel they are superior to the rest of us. Approximately eight out of ten times when my family and I have ridden our bikes through the park at least one of us has just about been plowed over by one of those egotistical speeders."—From a letter to the editor Which of the following best states the primary issue discussed in the passage?Version 1 2 A) whether there should be a speed limit for bicycle racers B) whether bicycle racers are egotistical C) whether the park is for everyone’s pleasure D) whether outings to the park are frequently spoiled by bicycle racers 4) "The Justice Department recently reported that the Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed more than 180,000 immigrants to become American citizens just before the last presidential election without completing background checks. The INS did this in hopes that most of the new immigrants would vote for Democrats. This political chicanery is an outrage, and Congress should demand accountability from the responsible officials." Which of the following best states the primary issue discussed in the passage? A) whether the INS allowed 180,000 immigrants to become American citizens without completing background checks B) whether the INS allowed 180,000 immigrants to become American citizens without background checks in hopes that the new immigrants would vote for Democrats C) whether this political chicanery shows that Congress should demand accountability from the responsible officials D) whether Congress should demand accountability from the responsible officials 5) "Should welfare recipients repay the state before they collect their winnings from the lottery? On the one hand, if you borrow money from somebody and win the lottery with it, you should repay the loan out of your winnings. But on the other hand, welfare is not a loan. It is a payment to people to help them improve their lives in the best way they can." Which of the following best states the primary issue discussed in the passage? A) whether welfare is a loan B) whether welfare should be used to play the lottery C) whether welfare recipients should repay the state before they collect winnings from the lottery D) whether the fact that welfare is a loan means that welfare recipients should repay the state before they collect winnings from the lottery Version 1 3 6) "The Republicans’ proposal to cut taxes on capital gains (profits from selling real estate, stocks, and bonds) is not a sop for the wealthy. It is a way to stimulate investment and ultimately to create jobs. That’s why it is in everyone’s interest to support the proposal." Which of the following best states the primary issue discussed in the passage? A) whether the proposal is a sop for the wealthy B) whether the proposal is a way to stimulate investment and ultimately to create jobs C) whether stimulating investment and creating jobs is a good thing D) whether it is in everyone’s interest to support the proposal 7) Which of the following is a subjective claim? A) Staring at the sun will damage your eyes. B) You shouldn’t buy that car because it is ugly. C) On a baseball field, the center of the pitcher’s mound is 59 feet from home plate. D) Pit vipers can strike a warm-blooded animal even when it is pitch dark. 8) Which of the following is a subjective claim? A) Leno tells better jokes than Letterman. B) Yellow is Jennifer’s favorite color. C) Pit vipers can strike a warm-blooded animal even when it is pitch dark. D) There is life on Mars. 9) Which of the following is an objective claim?Version 1 4 A) Sailing is the most soothing activity. B) Yellow is the most pleasant color to look at. C) Jason has great dressing sense. D) Driving while drowsy is dangerous. 10) Which of the following is an objective claim? A) Fallon tells better jokes than Colbert. B) Golf is a waste of time. C) In 2013 Miguel Cabrera hit the most home runs on a 3–0 count. D) Opera would be easier to listen to if they’d leave out the singing. 11) The first order of business when it comes to thinking critically about an issue is to A) determine whether the issue is objective. B) determine what, exactly, the issue is. C) identify the premise of the issue. D) identify the conclusion of the issue. 12) Which of the following is true of cognitive biases? A) They evaluate conclusions based on evidence. B) They help process information accurately. C) They interfere with one's ability to think clearly. D) They help people reason objectively. 13) The tendency to attach more weight to evidence that supports our viewpoint is known asVersion 1 5 A) confirmation bias. B) belief bias. C) negativity bias. D) availability bias. 14) General rules people unconsciously follow in estimating probabilities are known as A) subjective claims. B) objective claims. C) biases. D) heuristics. 15) Which of the following involves unconsciously assigning a probability to a type of event on the basis of how often one thinks of events of that type? A) Factual claim B) In-group bias C) Availability heuristic D) Obscure issue 16) The inclination that people may have to assume that their attitudes and those held by people around them are shared by society at large is known as A) the fundamental attribution error. B) the false consensus effect. C) negativity bias. D) confirmation bias. Version 1 6 17) An unconscious tendency to align one’s thinking with that of other people is known as the A) bandwagon effect. B) availability heuristic. C) confirmation bias. D) belief bias. 18) The tendency to not appreciate that others’ behavior is as much constrained by events and circumstances as our own would be if we were in their position is known as the A) false consensus effect. B) fundamental attribution error. C) bandwagon effect. D) overconfidence effect. 19) 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. Version 1 7 20) 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 21) 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. 22) 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" Version 1 8 23) 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 24) 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. 25) 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. Version 1 9 26) 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. 27) 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. 28) 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. Version 1 10 29) 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. 30) 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 31) 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 Version 1 11 32) 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 33) 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 34) 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 Version 1 12 35) 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 36) 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" 37) 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. Version 1 13 38) 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 39) 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." 40) 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.Version 1 14 41) 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. 42) 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?" Version 1 15 43) 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. 44) Identify each speaker that gives an argument for his or her position in the following passage. First Citizen: There has been a lot of talk in favor of having civilian police-review boards monitor law enforcement activities. That’s better than letting internal-affairs units try to do that job. Second Citizen: Right. The ethics of law enforcers is as important as the ethics of lawmakers. Letting them police themselves is like having the foxes guard the henhouse. 45) Identify each speaker that gives an argument for his or her position in the following passage. She: When you think about it, there’s every reason why women soldiers shouldn’t serve in combat. He: Well, I don’t think anyone should have to serve in combat. I wouldn’t make anyone serve who doesn’t want to.