#17- Ethicist: The penalties for drunk driving are far more

[Sambenz]

I answered this question with B in a timed test, and I think the reason I got this wrong was because I didn't understand the stimulus well enough to make my way through some of the longer sentences. I see that answer B is incorrect due to the word "include". That would result in a situation where a driver who intended to hurt but didn't would be legally penalized a severely as someone who intended, which is not the case from the stimulus.

[Adam Tyson]

I'm not sure if answer B would commit us to the idea that someone who intended but failed to harm someone would be punished as severely as someone who succeeded, Sambenz. What B is about is that legal criteria include moral criteria, but the stimulus gives us no reason to believe that. Rather, the stimulus supports, and our prephrase should be, that the two are simply different. You can be morally responsible for something for which you may not be legally responsible, and you could be legally responsible for something for which you may not be morally responsible.

[yammy1231]

I understood the argument as the following:
The argument assumes that the intention of the drunk driver whether or not if it resulted in an injury is the same. So punishing a drunk driver whether or not if it resulted in an injury is based on moral responsibility and the fact that a drunk driver causing an injury is punished more severly allows us to think that there is something more than just moral responsibility when it comes to legal respnsibility.

Doesnt this allow us to think that legal responsibility for an action include but are not the same as those for moreal responsibility as in answer choice B?

To start with, let's prephrase. The first sentence, which is what we are being asked about, describes something about legal responsibility. This has nothing to do with morality, other than to compare it to what we learn about moral responsibility later and learn that they are different. Not mutually exclusive, not necessarily overlapping, just different. That first sentence is a premise, supporting the conclusion that the two are different, since morality is only about intentions and legality sometimes disregards intent. It's a premise that supports the conclusion: Boom - that's answer D! Prephrasing makes D much clearer.

As to how I would eliminate the others, much of my analysis matches yours. Here's mine:

A. Solely about unintended stuff? No, just partly.
B. Nothing suggests that morality is included in legality. They are different, that's all.
C. The sentence is not about morality, but about legality.
D. Matches my prephrase. Winner.
E. Same as C, this sentence isn't about morality at all, just legality.

Looks like we are mostly on the same page here, with a few minor differences. Nice job! Keep that going!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Yammy,

You want to be careful about how you extrapolate from the example of the drunk driving in the argument.

In the argument, the fact that the penalties for drunk driving are different depending on whether people are injured tells us that legal responsibility depends (at least in some cases, such as this one) on factor's other than the actor's intentions. This does not necessarily mean intention plus other factors, just other factors. We do not know based on what is stated that the legal responsibility includes moral responsibility, only that they are different.

As mentioned above, there are likely actions that are legal but immoral and vice versa.