Woven baskets characterized by a particular distinctive pattern have previously been found only in the immediate vicinity of the prehistoric village of Palea and therefore were believed to have been made only by the Palean people. Recently, however, archaeologists discovered such a "Palean" basket in Lithos, an ancient village across the Brim River from Palea. The Brim River is very deep and broad, and so the ancient Paleans could have crossed it only by boat, and no Palean boats have been found. Thus, it follows that the so-called Palean baskets were not uniquely Palean.
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
It might seem logical, at first glance, to agree with the author, that those baskets specifically belonged to Paleans. However, the author of this argument relies on what might be less credible pieces of evidence or even unproven assumptions to support his claim, that I will distinguish them below.
First of all, the argument readily assumes that the baskets found in Lithos were made by the aboriginals of that village. However, this claim relies on an unproven analogy. For example, in those time both Palean and Lithos may have some businesses together and the baskets may be bought from Paleans and brought to Lithos. Plus, it could be possible that Paleans gave their neighbors their hand-made baskets as a gift in probably an ancient ritual. Hence, the argument would have been much more convincing if it explicitly stated that whether Lithos’ residents bought that baskets or if they were gifted or not. So, I simply cannot accept the author claim.
The author also points out that Paleans did not pass the river because of not finding any boat. The author has not accounted for the possibility that maybe they use some other instruments to pass the river such as bridges. Or maybe, because of meteorological conditions the river had another rout which had provided them some other ways to pass the river. The correlation alone amounts to scant evidence of the claimed cause-and-effect relationship. Perhaps, passing the river or not can be caused by other factors as well, which are absent in this particular state but present in all others. If so, then the argument’s claim would be unwarranted. If the argument had provided evidence that geologically there was impossible to build boats or pass along other routes to reach Lithos, then it would have been a lot more convincing to the reader.
One more problem with the argument involves the false assumption of how deep the river is, but the thing is, time may have changed the situation. The author assumes unfairly that everything remains unchanged by passing the time. It is as just likely that maybe the river was so shallow that it permitted them passing it easily. Or, maybe it was not so broad in that time which let them pass their goods through nomadic roped over the river. So, the conclusion suffers from lack of any merit. Without convincing answers to these obscurities, the reader is left with the impression that the claims made by the author are more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
To recapitulate, despite the argument suffers from several problems and is unconvincing but we cannot absolutely rely on it or refuse it without perusing any additional assumptions and reasoning. The author can strengthen his (her) assertion by changing states referred to the mentioned solutions. Without these changes, the argument is implausible and the reasoning is faulty.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 477 350
No. of Characters: 2333 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.673 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.891 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.581 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 73 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.639 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.708 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.29 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.49 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.12 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 781, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...oats or pass along other routes to reach Lithos, then it would have been a lot mo...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, however, if, may, so, then, well, for example, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2403.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 477.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.03773584906 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67336384929 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68621940512 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 245.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.513626834382 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 740.7 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 45.0582763085 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 100.125 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.875 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.875 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.100047882911 0.218282227539 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0279683507001 0.0743258471296 38% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0391958038298 0.0701772020484 56% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.054454839715 0.128457276422 42% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0630344065898 0.0628817314937 100% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.95 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.25 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.