Topic:
Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. Recently another anthropologist, Dr. Karp, visited the group of islands that includes Tertia and used the interview-centered method to study child-rearing practices. In the interviews that Dr. Karp conducted with children living in this group of islands, the children spent much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. Dr. Karp decided that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture must be invalid. Some anthropologists recommend that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method. Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

Response:

While we may not come to know the reality about the child-rearing traditions in the island of Tertia, we can still positively assert that the argument, in the way it is presented, by Dr.Karp has multiple fallacies and irrationalities that desiccates the cogency of the argument. Hence, only after acquiring more substantiative evidences and fatual data can we accept the conclusion that Dr.Karp so diligently stresses.

Primarily, scrutiny of the argument, immediately brings to our notice that Dr. Karp's conclusion rests on the words of the children living in the village. His premise that follows this being that if the children said it, then it necessarily has to be true. However, the evidence he has provided has little credibilility since we are left with very little data to evaluate his claim. Nothing about the number of children who were interviewed is mentioned in the argument and we are left to guess if the entire populace of children were interviewed or only a small fraction of them. Also the argument states that the children talked about their biological parents more however the logic behind Dr.Karp concluding that the mere act of talking about their biological parents is enough to show that they were reared by them is impercievable. Did the children explicitly mention that they were reared by their parents? Or was the topic about their biological parents been just a casual conversation? The presented fails to answer such obvious questions.

Furthermore, even though Dr. Key declares the observational evidences of Dr. Field invalid he doesn't offer a rationale behind this conclusion of his. There is nothing presented in the argument that shows that an interview-centered method is much superior to an observation centered method. In the argument it's just Dr.Key's words versus Dr.Field's and reaching a solid conclusion from the above is quite difficult. Again Dr.Key mentioning about what the children talked about and explaining why he proposes that his method is better than DR. Field would do a great deal in helping his cause. Perhaps if interview had questions that directly questioned the rearing methods of these children would help to objectively substantiate Dr.Key's position.

Finally, if we were to assume that Dr.Key's interview based methods were correct we still wouldn't know whether if Dr,Field was wrong since the observation based conclusion that he made was done wenty years ago and things could have changed since then. For Dr.Key to prove that Dr.Field's method was erroneous he would be required to acquire facts and statistics that show that the children in the island were reared by their biological parents even twenty years before. Only after presenting evidence in the mentioned form can the argument be convincing enought to prove that Dr.Field was, in fact, wrong.

In sum, Dr.Karp's arguments that challenge Dr.Field's methods need to be furthur bolstered with the above evidences. If done so Dr.Karp would have a strong case to cast enough doubts on Dr.Field's theory to render it invalid.