#16 - Some people take their moral cues from governmental

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Cannot Be True—SN. The correct answer choice is (A)

“Some people” define morality as synonymous with legality. According to these people, all legal behavior must be moral, and all moral behavior must be legal. All illegal behavior must be immoral, and all immoral behavior must be illegal.

We are looking for a principle which would be inconsistent with the above belief.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. If the law is silent on a particular action, then, under the original belief, implicitly the government’s lack of legislation must mean that the act is moral. But the answer choice stipulates that the action is immoral. This leads to a contradiction.

Answer choice (B): An illegal act is immoral. This is totally consistent with the original belief.

Answer choice (C): If government officials behave illegally, then they are also behaving immorally. This is all perfectly consistent with the original belief.

Answer choice (D): Society’s morality is expressed through legality. This is totally consistent with the original belief.

Answer choice (E): The issue of economic burden is separate from morality so this answer choice is irrelevant to the original belief.

[reop6780]

The correct answer is A while I chose B.

I see that B is kind of negated version of the stimuli's conclusion, and it could happen.

Here is my problem. I thought the correct answer should be proved wrong based upon the stimuli for "Cannot be true" type.

I felt answer A was out of range of stimuli to prove it wrong.

Secondly, I tried to look for an answer that has (S -> No N) since N must happen if S happens.

Stimuli's conclusion is Legally Permissible -> Moral.

In my head, the correct answer must be Legally Permissible -> Immoral (No Moral).

Answer A suggests a situation where morality cannot depend on law.

(hmm... is it why answer A correct?)

However, not knowing whether something is legally permissible or not I could not provide evidence from the stimuli against it.

Help me out, powerscore...

[Nicholas Bruno]

Hi!

So the question asks which of the the answer choices contradicts the "some people" discussed in the stimulus. The stimulus says that these people "take their moral cues from governmental codes of law."

You don't have to "prove" the stimulus wrong here. All you got to do is show that the answer choice contradicts a part of the stimulus.

A contradicts this area because it says that the "law does not cover all circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another." If this is true, than it is impossible to take moral cues from law because the law is an incomplete guide to morality. Thus, the views would be contradictory.


I hope that helps!

[Nicholas Bruno]

By the way, for future reference, these questions are logic reasoning questions and should go in the logic reasoning section of the forum

[prep88]

Hello,

I got these people thinking that: "legaly permissible moral"; could you please show me how the double arrow works here?

Thank you!

[Andrew Ash]

Hi Prep,

Actually, I'm inclined to agree with you here! For those of you following along, we're looking at the sentence "it is inconceivable that something that is legally permissible could be immoral." To my mind, this looks like a conditional statement: "If it's legally permissible, then it must not be immoral (i.e., it must be moral)." And I would diagram it the same way that you did.

My colleague who wrote the explanation you found online must have inferred from the first sentence, which says that these people "take their moral cues from governmental codes of law," that the law determines what is moral and what is not. So while I think she was justified in claiming that the relationship is actually a double arrow, I also agree with you that the question could also be read as a normal conditional statement.

Fortunately, this ambiguity has no effect on the answer choices. If we read the stimulus the way you did, so that it claims "legally permissible moral," then our prephrase should be a violation of this conditional relationship: namely, something that is legally permissible and is not moral. And that's what we get in answer choice (A): some circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another, but it's legal anyway.

If you interpreted the stimulus as a double arrow, "legally permissible moral," your analysis would be much the same: the statement implies that these two things are a package deal, so we're looking to get one of them, but not the other, in the correct answer to a Cannot Be True question. And answer choice (A) provides us with something that is legally permissible, but not moral.

So in summary: I think that your conditional interpretation was spot-on, but I also think that the stimulus could be interpreted as a double arrow. Either way, you would be in great shape to get to the correct answer choice.

Best,
Andrew

[kristinaroz93]

These cannot be true questions are incredibly difficult.

"Some people take their moral cues from governmental codes of law; for them, it is inconceivable that something is legally permissable could be immoral".

I chose A based on this line of reasoning, please let me know if it is correct:

Legally permissable--> moral/ not immoral

So A says that the law does not cover all circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another. I took that to mean that something could be legally permissable (because no laws against something means it is legal) and yet not be moral. So the sufficient occurs but the necessary is not met.

How accurate is my reasoning here?

Best,

Kristina

(I apologize for all the posts lately)

[Steve Stein]

Hey Kristina,

First of all, please don't apologize! These have been some great questions you've been asking. And once again, you've got it! Just to restate the point that you've made, the people referred to by the author think that if it's legal, then it must be moral (legal moral).

For those people, it would be inconsistent to believe that there are legally permissible acts which are, nonetheless, morally wrong.

I agree that this one has a lot of potential to be confusing; nicely done! Please let me know if anything is unclear--thanks!

~Steve

[kristinaroz93]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for the reassurances regarding this particualr problem, I really appreciate it and all the help you have provided me thus far.

Best,

Kristina

[jiny9]

Hi!
I chose B because I thought B violated the logical diagram: If it is legal, then it is moral. B is a mistaken negation by saying that if it is not legal, then it is not moral. Since the question asks for a view that is inconsistent to that held by "some people" and B is clearly inconsistent with the stated perspective, B should be the right choice. Would someone like to point out why my thinking is wrong? Thank you very much.