#26 - Students in a college ethics class were asked to

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—PR. The correct answer choice is (D)

This stimulus presents an experiment wherein students in an ethics class consider two different publications, both of which have published a demeaning and offensive classified ad, to determine if either publication has exhibited moral delinquency by publishing it. While the first publication had undertaken to monitor the ads, the policy of the second was to publish any ad that had been paid for.

Most of the students in the study believed the first publication to be morally delinquent, and the second not to be. The principle reflected here appears to be something like "if you undertake to monitor, your failure to filter is more offensive."


The question stem requires that we find the answer choice which most strengthens the assertion that only the one that has committed to monitoring, filtering, and prohibiting objectionable materials.

Answer choice (A): Since both magazines published the ad in question, this answer choice fails to provide a justifiable way to distinguish between the two magazines, and thus cannot be correct.

Answer choice (B): Like answer choice (A) above, this choice would apply to both magazines in question, so this could not be a justification for finding only one of the magazines morally delinquent.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice would lead one to treat the two magazines as equal, rather than providing grounds for distinguishing them, so this cannot be the right answer choice.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. Applying this answer choice to the stimulus, failure to filter out objectionable ads is not necessarily a moral failing except for the publication which had specifically committed to undertake such filtering.

Answer choice (E): This choice does not apply to the stimulus, because both magazines published ads that may have offended some of their readers. This choice does not justify finding only the first magazine morally delinquent, so this answer choice is incorrect.

[sgd2114]

Hi,

I chose (D) because I thought the principle helped to justify the judgment in the stimulus. However, I just want to make sure I understand exactly how (D) works. If I think about the conditional reasoning in (D) in the 'if / then' construction, I get "Failure to uphold a moral standard is a moral failing if they have specifically committed themselves to upholding that standard."

In the stimulus, for Magazine #1, we know that they did commit themselves to upholding that standard. However, we can't determine whether there was a moral failing because that would be a Mistaken Reversal. For Magazine #2, we can justify that there was no moral failing by the contrapositive. Is that correct?

If that's the case, then answer (D) works by strengthening the judgment that Magazine #2 was not morally delinquent, but does NOT strengthen the judgment that Magazine #1 was?

Thank you!

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi SGD,

It sounds like you translated the "except" phrasing correctly into a "if...then" phrasing. I still want to make sure that you understand the relationship. You should think of the principle in answer choice (D) as stating the following

Commit to uphold a standard Failure to uphold that standard is a moral failing

That is, if you commit yourself to a standard and fail to do it, then you have morally failed. We know from the stimulus that magazine 1 had a commitment to standards and they failed to live up to these commitments. Thus we can say that they had a moral failing.

It sounds like you mistakenly reversed your interpretation of the conditional statement. Let me know if this helps.

[nivernova]

I was sure that like the word 'unless", the sentence before 'except' becomes negated and triggers then sentence after the word which becomes the necessary condition.....

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, nivernova,

This is somewhat challenging to parse because the sentence before the "except for" is itself a conditional. Basically it can be broken down as follows:

(Failure to uphold a moral standard a moral failing) committed themselves to upholding standard

The "except for" does give us a necessary condition. It gives us a necessary condition for the conditional itself to be valid as diagrammed above.

Let's look at the contrapositive:

~(committed themselves to upholding standard) ~(Failure to uphold a moral standard a moral failing)

In other words for it to be true that "failure to uphold a moral standard IS necessarily a moral failing it is necessary that they committed themselves to upholding that standard."

Thus, the unless equation checks out here!

I hope this helps!