#19 - I promised Bernie that I would answer his question.

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion. The correct answer choice is (A).

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[nicizle]

I was stuck between A and D for this question. Could you explain why A is the answer, rather than D?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi nicizle,

This is a Justify question, so we need to find the answer that, when added to the premises of the argument, will 100% prove the conclusion.

The conclusion here is that the speaker has fulfilled his promise to Bernie. The first sentence of the stimulus tells us that the speaker promised to answer Bernie's question, so we need to prove that the speaker has in fact answered Bernie's question. The speaker provides Bernie with certain information in attempting to answer Bernie's question, but we haven't actually established that the speaker did in fact answer Bernie's question and thus fulfill the speaker's promise.

In other words, we need an answer that basically says that the information that the speaker gave Bernie did in fact answer Bernie's question.

Answer A does this by stating that providing the information requested is all there is to answering a question. Since the speaker did provide the information requested (by stating that a decision had not been made yet), the speaker has therefore answered the question according to Answer A and therefore the speaker fulfilled the speaker's promise.

Simply put, Answer D does not prove that the speaker did fulfill the speaker's promise. D only discusses "one need not fulfill a promise," but we are trying to prove that the speaker did fulfill the promise, and the way to do that is to show that the speaker in fact did answer Bernie's question (which is what the speaker promised to do.)