#15 - Editorial: The threat of harsh punishment for a

[BostonLawGuy]

I was able to select the correct answer choice, even though I had two different diagrams. I would appreciate it if someone can tell me the correct way to chain up the two premises.

Premise 1. Harsh punishment decrease guilt & shame
Premise 2. increase guilt & shame decrease transgressions

Option #1 increase transgressions harsh punishment decrease shame & guilt

Option #2 Harsh punishment increase guilt increase transgressions

Since the conclusion is harsh penalties increase ignore welfare, either way I get the correct answer choice: transgressions ignore welfare

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Boston,

This is a good example of a problem where once you see the jump from premises to the conclusion, you can dive right into the answers to see if one fills the Supporter gap that exists here (which is, as you rightly noted, connecting the tendency to commit transgressions with ignoring the welfare of others).

As far as diagramming the premises, I'd probably go with:

• Harsh punishment decrease guilt & shame increase tendency to commit transgressions

Note how loose those relationships are, though: "usually decreases" and "tendency reduces." It feels as much causal as conditional, although that doesn't change how the problem operates. And note how I also connected the two premises through guilt and shame, even though one was decreases and the other was similar to increases. Since those are on the same basic scale, I took a slight liberty there to make it work.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[BostonLawGuy]

Yes, you're the best! Thanks.

[Jerrymakehabit]

Hi PowerScore,

I agree with the chain talked above.

Harsh punishment decrease guilt & shame increase tendency to commit transgressions amplify people's tendency to ignore others' welfare.

B) looks like a mistaken reverse: some actions ignoring others' welfare commit transgressions. That is why I eliminated B) when I was working on it. I chose C) because "threats to their own well-being" is "harsh punishment". So C) is Harsh punishment tendency to ignore others' welfare which is also a supporter for the logic here.

What is wrong with my analysis?

Thanks!
Jerry

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Jerry,

I think your confusion lies with imagining it as a single conditional thread.

The premises can be linked as a a chain: Harsh punishment decrease guilt & shame increase tendency to commit transgressions.

But here's the rub. The conclusion makes one heck of a leap. Harsh punishment :arrow amplify people’s tendency to ignore the welfare of others.

Woah. Where did that come from? Ignore the welfare of others? Was that anywhere else in the stimulus? Nope. Immediately that should be a clue that you'll need to find a way to link that new information in the conclusion to the rest of the stimulus. It's a classic supporter assumption scenario, and you'll be looking for something that links transgressions to ignoring the welfare of others. That's answer choice (B). If some transgressions include ignoring the welfare of others, then the conclusion follows. Harsh punishment increases the tendency to commit transgressions, including those that ignore the welfare of others.

Answer choice (C) has a couple of problems. It's not necessary for the conclusion to follow. Harsh punishments might be a threat to well being, but we haven't established that the people in the stimulus are concerned about threats to their own well being. We might assume they are. It would make sense that anyone is. But the stimulus doesn't establish it, so we can't quite figure out how the answer choice would fit into the stimulus. Additionally, answer choice (C) states that people concerned about threats to their own well being are less concerned with others, but that's different than completely ignoring the welfare of others.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[Jerrymakehabit]

Hi Jerry,

I think your confusion lies with imagining it as a single conditional thread.

The premises can be linked as a a chain: Harsh punishment decrease guilt & shame increase tendency to commit transgressions.

But here's the rub. The conclusion makes one heck of a leap. Harsh punishment :arrow amplify people’s tendency to ignore the welfare of others.

Woah. Where did that come from? Ignore the welfare of others? Was that anywhere else in the stimulus? Nope. Immediately that should be a clue that you'll need to find a way to link that new information in the conclusion to the rest of the stimulus. It's a classic supporter assumption scenario, and you'll be looking for something that links transgressions to ignoring the welfare of others. That's answer choice (B). If some transgressions include ignoring the welfare of others, then the conclusion follows. Harsh punishment increases the tendency to commit transgressions, including those that ignore the welfare of others.

Answer choice (C) has a couple of problems. It's not necessary for the conclusion to follow. Harsh punishments might be a threat to well being, but we haven't established that the people in the stimulus are concerned about threats to their own well being. We might assume they are. It would make sense that anyone is. But the stimulus doesn't establish it, so we can't quite figure out how the answer choice would fit into the stimulus. Additionally, answer choice (C) states that people concerned about threats to their own well being are less concerned with others, but that's different than completely ignoring the welfare of others.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

Rachael,

Thank you very much for explaining. I think it is better to look at B) "At least some actions that involve ignoring the welfare of others are transgressions" as actions that involve ignoring the welfare of others transgressions. Since the relation is bi-directional we will not have a problem with the conditional arrow flow.

Thanks
Jerry

[fortunateking]

Dear PS people,
I have a question on the following (quote):
The premises can be linked as a a chain: Harsh punishment decrease guilt & shame increase tendency to commit transgressions.
IMHO, If A↑→B↓，that doesn't necessarily lead to A↓→B↑，
which in this question means that Harsh punishment lead to lower quilt which doesn't necessarily increase the tendency to transgressions
Please let me know if I'm wrong.

[Adam Tyson]

Try thinking of it causally rather than conditionally, fortunateking, since "reduces" is a causal idea. If less guilt causes more transgressions, then in the absence of that cause the tendency to commit transgressions should decrease. When the cause is absent, the effect should also be absent, because otherwise that causal claim makes no sense.

To use an analogy, if I am going to claim that meditation reduces stress, I have to assume that in the absence of meditation I one must experience a relatively higher level of stress. There has to be some larger amount of stress to be reduced by the act of meditation in order for it to have that effect.

[valegria]

Hi,
Question, about linking the premises together. So I got
Premise 1: Threat of harsh punishment for transgression --> decrease G OR S
Premise 2: G OR S ---> decrease tendency to commit Transgressions

Conclusion: Increase severity of harsh punishment for transgressions may grow peoples tendency to ignore the welfare of others

I got this wrong, I picked E. I knew "ignore the welfare of others" had to be in the answer choice. But B did not convince me because I thought it only supported the conclusion not the relationship btwn the premises & conclusion.
But my main question is how is it that you can link up "decrease G OR S" with a positive "G OR S" and then change decrease to increase the ending of the premise (decrease tendency to commit Transgressions)

I am not sure in how that can be valid.

[Chandler H]

Hi,
Question, about linking the premises together. So I got
Premise 1: Threat of harsh punishment for transgression --> decrease G OR S
Premise 2: G OR S ---> decrease tendency to commit Transgressions

Conclusion: Increase severity of harsh punishment for transgressions may grow peoples tendency to ignore the welfare of others

I got this wrong, I picked E. I knew "ignore the welfare of others" had to be in the answer choice. But B did not convince me because I thought it only supported the conclusion not the relationship btwn the premises & conclusion.
But my main question is how is it that you can link up "decrease G OR S" with a positive "G OR S" and then change decrease to increase the ending of the premise (decrease tendency to commit Transgressions)

I am not sure in how that can be valid.

Hi valegria,

It's easier to deal with these premises if we rephrase the second one to match the first. Instead of writing that "guilt or shame decreases tendency to commit transgressions," let's say that "decreased guilt or shame INCREASES tendency to commit transgressions." That way, our "decreased G/S" variable is carried over between the first and second premises. Also, we can replace the "increasing severity of legal penalties" to "harsh punishment," since that is certainly a harsher punishment. Those changes give us this diagram:

Premise 1: HP decreased G/S
Premise 2: decreased G/S increased tendency to CT (commit transgressions)
Conclusion: HP increased tendency to IWO (ignore welfare of others)

We can now see that the premises demand that IWO = CT; ignoring welfare of others is a transgression. That is what answer choice (B) tells us.

Does that make sense?