#12 - One can never tell whether another person is acting

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

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

In this stimulus, the author argues that because you cannot know the intentions behind any given act, you cannot know whether that act was moral. Therefore, the author asserts, an action should be evaluated based on its consequences rather than its morality. The question stem requires that we locate the principle that will strengthen the author's argument.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice, saying, in basic terms, that if you wish to evaluate the morality of an action, you must know the intent behind it. If this principle is valid, that strengthens the authors assertion that you cannot know whether an act was moral. This is the basis of the author's conclusion that acts should be evaluated based on consequence rather than morality.

Answer choice (B): The author does not discuss assignment of praise or blame, so this principle would not strengthen the argument in the stimulus.

Answer choice (C): This choice is irrelevant to the stimulus, which deals with evaluations of other's actions ("One can never tell whether another person is acting…").

Answer choice (D): The author deals only with the proper method of evaluating actions, and is not concerned with the distinction between good and bad people, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (E): The point of the stimulus is not that you need to know consequences to make moral judgments. The point is that consequence is a better basis for the evaluation of others' acts than morality.

[Sherry001]

Hello;
Could someone please check my reasoning for this question? - I was a bit hesitant between AC A and E.

P1: never know someone's ulterior motive .
P2: impossible to tell if action is moral

C: one should evaluate consequences of a action rather than morality .

QT; Strengthen—Principle.

A) to evaluate morality -> intention of actions are essential

B) sort of maybe weakens by giving us an alternate way of assessing. But at best irrelevant we don't care what's important to assessment. We need to strengthen that assessment is more important than morality .

C) weakens

D) irrelevant

E) know moral actions -> know the consciences of a persons actions .

I was very tempted by answer choice E , the only reason I didn't choose it was because of "knowing " rather than "evaluating " .

Thanks very much
Sherry

[David Boyle]

Hello;
Could someone please check my reasoning for this question? - I was a bit hesitant between AC A and E.

P1: never know someone's ulterior motive .
P2: impossible to tell if action is moral

C: one should evaluate consequences of a action rather than morality .

QT; Strengthen—Principle.

A) to evaluate morality -> intention of actions are essential

B) sort of maybe weakens by giving us an alternate way of assessing. But at best irrelevant we don't care what's important to assessment. We need to strengthen that assessment is more important than morality .

C) weakens

D) irrelevant

E) know moral actions -> know the consciences of a persons actions .

I was very tempted by answer choice E , the only reason I didn't choose it was because of "knowing " rather than "evaluating " .

Thanks very much
Sherry

Hello Sherry001,

From the stimulus, the most notable connection is basically, "slash know ulterior motive
slash tell if action is moral", the contrapositive of which is "tell if action is moral know ulterior motive". That contrapositive is pretty close to answer A, "The intention of an action is indispensable for an evaluation of its morality."
Answer E goes off on a distracting ride. Your diagramming of it above seems pretty correct (except for saying "consciences" rather than "consequences"), but: answer E mixes apples and oranges (the stimulus said we should evaluate consequences instead of morality, but answer E connects them to each other); and answer E also doesn't connect to the issue of intention, which was what had a solid connection to morality in the earlier part of the stimulus, and which, again, answer A deals with pretty well.
(Also, I wasn't sure what you meant by "We need to strengthen that assessment is more important than morality", though since answer B is wrong in any case, it may not matter too much.)

Hope this helps,
David

[jgray]

Could you diagram out this argument? I am having a hard time distinguishing bwn S/N whether or not to negate. Thank you.

[Kristina Moen]

Hi jgray,

This is a Strengthen question, so the Assumption Negation Technique will not work here. Only use that technique on Assumption questions. So let's talk about how to diagram this stimulus.

"One can never tell whether another person is acting from an ulterior motive" is not really a conditional statement per se. Remember, a conditional statement creates a relationship between two things (people, events, whatever!) where one thing is necessary for the other. If you see the sentence "Law students can never be ten years old," that creates two distinct groups (where to be a law student, it is necessary that the person is not 10 years old). But here, the word "one" is difficult to put into a group. The group of humans? I suppose you COULD diagram this as "one can't tell whether another person is acting from an ulterior motive" but that doesn't seem super useful. I would probably just write "don't know ulterior motive" next to the sentence.

"Therefore, it is impossible to tell whether someone’s action is moral" is also not a conditional statement, but it is quite a leap in logic! The first premise talked about ulterior motive, and now this sub-conclusion talks about actions being moral. Take note!

"So one should evaluate the consequences of an action rather than its morality." This is the conclusion and it is also not a conditional statement. The word "should" indicates a prescription, not an airtight conditional relationship where one thing is necessary for another.

However, the conditional relationship you always want (and is frequently missing!) in an argument is this one:
Premise (+ premise + premise...) conclusion

What would that sentence look like? Keep in mind sometimes what you are looking for is Premise A Sub-conclusion.

[thegreatperhaps]

I'm having a bit of trouble identifying the main conclusion that is meant to be justified:

Is the conclusion: "And so one should evaluate the consequences of an action rather than its morality" or "therefore, it is impossible to tell whether someone's action is moral."

Do both of these statements count as conclusions and one is just the subsidiary conclusion? If so, which one?

[AthenaDalton]

The conclusion to this argument (paraphrased) is that "one should evaluate the consequences of an action" and not the motive behind the action to determine whether or not it is moral.

[Res Publica]

Hi, I approached this question as a Justify the Conclusion/Principle question. Can you explain why the question stem is a strengthen PR question and not a JC-PR question? I see "justify" and "if assumed" which made me approach this question mechanistically and get the question wrong. Thanks.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Res Publica,

This is a tricky question stem. You are right that it has traditional buzz words ("if assumed") that indicate a justify stem. However, a justify stem will not lessen the degree of justification. It will not use words like "most helps to justify," or "most justifies." This is because a justify question is an absolute. Either an answer choice is sufficient to draw the conclusion, or it isn't. There's no middle ground. But if you are only helping to justify, you are looking for something that is just helping.

It takes practice to differentiate between strengthen, justify, and assumption questions. When you read them, think through a mental checklist. Is there sufficient language or necessary language in the stem? Is there any language that lessons the degree of justification?

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[Res Publica]

Hi Res Publica,

It will not use words like "most helps to justify," or "most justifies." This is because a justify question is an absolute. Either an answer choice is sufficient to draw the conclusion, or it isn't. There's no middle ground. l

That helped tremendously, thank you!