Can someone explain what "proceeds by" means when used in the question stem of a CR problem? Examples would be great too. Thanks.

e.g.
The argument proceeds by
or
The argument in the passage proceeds by

Hello,

In this case, "proceeds by" is another way of saying "makes its case by using" or "goes about its task with the help of" or "makes its way by."

Here are some examples of it used in everyday usage, all clipped from recent news articles, just to give you "real world" examples:

* "It's intermittently ruthless, but proceeds by calculation, much of it about survival."

* "The trip departs BSB in the early morning and proceeds by speedboat to Bangar town where you will go overland to Batang Duri."

* "It is science in the modern sense of the word, science that proceeds by formulating laws and hypotheses and testing them by observation and experiment."

Hope that helps!

Scott

Thanks Scott.
How should we treat these problems? Strenghten, Inference?

for example, how would you do this problem:

The recently negotiated North American Free Trade Agreement among Canada, Mexico, and the United States is misnamed, because it would not result in truly free trade. Adam Smith, the economist who first articulated the principles of free trade, held that any obstacle placed in the way of the free movement of goods, investment, or labor would defeat free trade. So since under the agreement workers would be restricted by national boundaries from seeking the best conditions they could find, the resulting obstruction of the flow of trade would, from a free-trade perspective, be harmful.

The argument proceeds by
(A) ruling out alternatives
(B) using a term in two different senses
(C) citing a nonrepresentative instance
(D) appealing to a relevant authority
(E) responding to a different issue from the one posed

When phrased this way, the CR question is treated as a Method of Reasoning question.

VP Help