#16 - Ethicist: In a recent judicial decision, a contractor

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello

I am trying to understand why A is not the correct answer. Would this answer be wrong because it is not supported by facts in the stimulus. In that A says "it is morally wrong for one party not to abide by its part of an agreement only if the other party abides by its part of the agreement. The stimulus only mentions the company signing an agreement prior to entering the contract and the contractor not be held financially liable if they messed up the construction job?

Also E is correct b/c in the stimulus it says that "company had signed a written agreement prior to entering into the contract that the contractor would not be financially liable should the task not be adequately performed. Which would make E correct?

Thankyou
Sarah

[Robert Carroll]

Sarah,

Because this is a Strengthen question, it's ok for the answer to contain new information - it does not need to be supported by facts in the stimulus. Instead, the answer choice and its new information must make a connection between the premises and conclusion such that the information the ethicist brings up becomes relevant to the ethicist's conclusion. The ethicist claims that the company signed a written agreement about liability, but then sought restitution later. The ethicist concludes that this was morally wrong. We don't have a basis for thinking this is morally wrong without further information, something that essentially says "When you agree to something, it's morally wrong not to stick by your agreement."

With that in mind, let's evaluate answer choice (A). It's a conditional - it says:

morally wrong not to abide by agreement other party abides by agreement

In other words, the sufficient condition is that it is morally wrong not to abide by an agreement. Conditionals allow us to conclude the necessary condition if we know the sufficient condition. In this case, the conclusion is the sufficient condition, which is the unknown information we want to get to. The conditional doesn't help us because it does not allow us to go from the known information in the premises to the new information in the conclusion. The conditional only works if we know the conclusion already - but the entire point of this stimulus is that the argument is not yet established, so we don't know the conclusion. This is why answer choice (A) cannot provide the connection we need.

Answer choice (E) says that under a certain condition ("in the context of a promise to forgo such compensation"), we can conclude that "it is morally wrong to seek compensation for an action". The conclusion we can make is the conclusion of the stimulus, so this is good so far. We just need to make sure that the condition allowing us to make that conclusion ("in the context of a promise to forgo such compensation") is something already given as true in the premises of the stimulus. And that is indeed true - the company agreed the contractor would not be liable, so the company promised not to seek compensation for something the contractor did. And yet the company later sought that very compensation, which answer choice (E) claims is morally wrong - just like the conclusion of the stimulus.

Robert Carroll

[OneSeventy2019]

I had identified (D) and (E) as contenders but mistakenly chose (D). In reviewing, I'm fairly confident where I went wrong - choice (D) would require that there is "clear evidence that the agreement was legally permissible" and there simply is not enough in the stimulus to support this. Is that about right?

When I was doing this section (timed), I believe, I erroneously inferred that the existence of a signed written agreement implied a "clear evidence that the agreement was legally permissible" but I imagine a handful of scenarios where that is not the case...

Also, I think the word "compensation" threw me off since I typically associate compensation with recompense for something as opposed to money acquired through legal action.

Thanks!

[Claire Horan]

Hi OneSeventy2019,

Look carefully at (D) and you'll see that it says it's morally wrong ONLY IF clear evidence that agreement is legally permissible. Remember that "only if" indicates a necessary condition. Therefore, the proper way to diagram this is:

morally wrong to ignore... clear evidence

The contrapositive would then be:

clear evidence morally wrong to ignore

Notice that neither the original diagram nor the contrapositive allow us to draw the conclusion that something is morally wrong. To do so would be a mistaken reversal of the original statement. Thus, this is the wrong answer regardless of whether "clear evidence" was present in the stimulus.

As far as your confusion about (E), "compensation" in law and everyday life means exactly what you thought it did: recompense for injury or loss. In this case, the contractor caused financial loss to the company by bungling the construction job and were ordered to pay restitution to compensate the company for that loss. That said, there's not much you can do in the short term about vocabulary issues, so don't sweat it! If you plan to study for several months, though, you could consider reading material with a high reading level when you're not studying for the LSAT.

Happy studying!

[goingslow]

Hi! Would (A) be correct if we replace "only if" with "if"? Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

While that would make answer A better, goingslow, I don't think it would do much to help, because we don't know from these facts whether the contractor abided by their side of the agreement. They bungled the job, which means they did it badly, but that's all we know. Did they do everything else they were supposed to do? Did they do it in accordance with the terms of the agreement? The concept of "abiding by its part of the agreement" is not adequately addressed in the stimulus, so that answer still would read to me like a trap answer. Better, yes, but still not as good as answer E!

[goingslow]

While that would make answer A better, goingslow, I don't think it would do much to help, because we don't know from these facts whether the contractor abided by their side of the agreement. They bungled the job, which means they did it badly, but that's all we know. Did they do everything else they were supposed to do? Did they do it in accordance with the terms of the agreement? The concept of "abiding by its part of the agreement" is not adequately addressed in the stimulus, so that answer still would read to me like a trap answer. Better, yes, but still not as good as answer E!

Thank you, Adam! This is very clarifying.