Single choice · #567
At the quarterly meeting, employee Xiao Li pointed out that the new attendance system easily harms colleagues who work in the field. The HR manager responded, "The company is like a family; a son doesn't dislike his mother's ugliness. Since you receive a salary, you shouldn't criticize the company in public." What is the main logical problem with the manager's analogy?
Show answer & explanation
Answer: C
- AThe analogy is apt: the company supports employees like a mother raises her children, so employees publicly voicing opinions is disloyalty✗ Wrong. It accepts the manager's substitution: the only similarity relevant to the conclusion is the emotional one of 'sense of belonging,' but the company is a service and management relationship, and pointing out a problem with the system is not disloyalty. This exactly replicates the conclusion of an emotionally coercive analogy.
- BIt is a slippery slope fallacy: allowing public opinions today will lead to employees disobeying all management tomorrow✗ Wrong. A slippery slope fallacy requires claiming that the first step inevitably leads to a chain of severe consequences, but there is no such chain in the prompt. This option mislabels the type of fallacy.
- CIt replaces the question of whether the system is reasonable with whether employees are loyal, without providing reasons to maintain the current system✓ Right. The manager uses the similarity of 'loyalty' to turn the question of whether the attendance system is reasonable into a question of employee loyalty, shifting the original question and providing no basis for the system itself.
- DIt is a hasty generalization: Xiao Li's individual dissatisfaction cannot represent the opinions of all employees✗ Wrong. The manager does not conclude based on Xiao Li representing all employees; the problem is not sample size, but substituting a specific systemic criticism for an attitude and loyalty issue.
Explanation:The manager's analogy only captures the emotional similarity of 'sense of belonging,' replacing the question of whether the attendance system is reasonable with whether employees are loyal. According to the steps for checking an analogy: first ask what conclusion the other party wants to draw from the analogy—it is to silence the critic; then ask whether the similarity is truly relevant to the conclusion—the company and family differ in rights and responsibilities, with the company being a service and management relationship, and pointing out a specific system problem is not equivalent to denying the organization. When responding, one can first acknowledge the similarity then check the difference: 'The company does have a family-like aspect, but the two sides are in an employment relationship; voicing opinions is not disloyalty, where is the evidence for the system's reasonableness?' The option that considers the analogy apt accepts the substitution; the options attributing it to slippery slope or hasty generalization misuse the fallacy labels.