#23 - Well-intentioned people sometimes attempt to resolve

[lday4]

Can you explain why D is incorrect? Does it also support the stimulus but not as strongly as E?

Thanks!

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi lday4,

Answer choice (D) is SO close. But, (E) is better Here's why:

The argument boils down to this:

• Premise: Well-intentioned attempts to resolve marital problems do not always result in success.
  Conclusion: Well-intentioned attempts to resolve marital problems are unjustified.

To strengthen this line of reasoning, we'd ideally want to show that only actions that result in success are justified:

• Success Justified
  Contrapositive: Justified Success

This is basically what answer choice (E) states: it provides a strong, definitive statement positing the successful outcome as a necessary condition for justifying well-intentioned actions.

Why is answer choice (D) incorrect?

Well, just because your intentions are irrelevant doesn't mean that your well-intentioned but unsuccessful action is unjustified. The author is probably going to agree with (D), but our job is not to identify an answer choice that must be true, but rather an answer choice that, if true, would most strongly support the conclusion. Even if answer choice (D) is true, it is still possible that a lousy attempt to fix someone else's marital problem is justified for some reason having nothing to do with either the intended or the actual result of this action. Maybe attempting to save other people's marital problems is an ethical or a religious imperative that trumps all other considerations, including the ultimate failure of these attempts to come to fruition.

Does that make sense? Let me know.

Thanks,

[lday4]

Makes sense, thank you!

[mokkyukkyu]

Hi, So just wanna double check...
Here, the author uses "ineffectual" to show it was not successful right?

Sometimes I'm not sure when term changes are allowed...

[Nikki Siclunov]

Correct. The two terms are used synonymously.

[gcs4v333]

Why I chose (D) as opposed to (E) has to do with the strength of the conclusion, and the force of the answer choices.

The conclusion is: "Thus, even well-intentioned attempts to resolve the martial problems of friends are usually unjustified.

I ruled out (E) because it says: "No actions based on good intentions are justified unless they also result in success.

But that seems too strong for the conclusion. The conclusion of the prompt seems to allow room for unsuccessful attempts to sometimes be justified, while if you follow the principle in (E), those attempts are never ever justified. So I chose (D) out of process of elimination. Am I placing too much weight on the strength of the principle?

[James Finch]

Hi GCSV,

The key to understanding what the "usually" in the stimulus's conclusion is referring to is to look at the sentence before it: the attempts are "usually ineffectual," leading to those attempts being usually unjustified. What the stimulus is assuming is that attempts that are effective/successful can be justified, but unsuccessful attempts never can--exactly what (E) says, and what helps justify our conclusion.

Hope this clears things up!

[lemonade42]

Hello,

I'm confused by the example given for why (D) is wrong. Mainly: "it is still possible that a lousy attempt to fix someone else's marital problem is justified for some reason having nothing to do with either the intended or the actual result of this action. Maybe attempting to save other people's marital problems is an ethical or a religious imperative that trumps all other considerations, including the ultimate failure of these attempts to come to fruition." I'm confused on what this is showing us. Is it trying to show that well-intentioned attempts to resolve marital problems are justified? But it's also saying there is no intentions?...

[Jeff Wren]

Hi lemonade,

I think that what the above example is showing is that there could still be other reasons for why attempts to resolve the marital problems of friends could still be justified even if intentions are irrelevant and even if these attempts usually fail (i.e. ineffectual).

It's not saying that there are no intentions, just that the intentions don't matter. In other words, the attempts could be justified regardless of intentions.

The key is focusing on the conclusion of the argument that even well intentioned attempts to resolve the marital problems of friends are usually not justified.

Answer D tells us that intentions are irrelevant, but how does that support the idea that these attempts are usually unjustified. They could still be justified for reasons that have nothing to do with the person's intentions or with whether the actual marriage gets resolved.

This brings us back to the example. It's trying to show us that attempts (whether well-intentioned or not) to resolve marital problems of friends MAY be justified for reasons for completely unrelated reasons.

There may be good (justifiable) reasons to attempt to resolve the marital problems for friends. It may be good for society, for the institution of marriage, there may be religious reasons, etc.. Since these are possible, Answer D doesn't really show that the attempts are unjustified.