#20 - The desire for praise is the desire to obtain, as a

[desmail]

Hi,

I'm having an issue with answer choice (A). I understand the conditional logic behind the answer and how to get there, but the word "primarily" in the conclusion throws me off.

I feel as if the author is implicitly stating that you can have both, you can primarily want praise for yourself and maybe you are also a little motivated to help others.

So when we add answer choice A, basically saying we cant have both, plus the conclusion (which hints that maybe you could have both) sounds a little inconsistent when i read it to myself.

Thank you!
Dana

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey Dana,

Thanks for your question. The word "primarily" in the conclusion does not necessarily mean that the author is implying you can have both: it just means that as long as your primary motivation is to receive praise, don't deserve such praise. Whether you have other, secondary, motivations to receive such praise is irrelevant, since the addition of (A) to the premises is still sufficient to produce the conclusion:

Premise: Deserve Praise --> Desire to Help Others

Answer choice (A): Desire to Help Others <--/--> Desire for Praise (i.e. obtain the favorable opinions of others)

Conclusion: Deserve Praise <--/--> Desire for Praise

The solutions to these questions is highly mechanistic, and while it's important to focus on the language, be careful not to read too much into it

[avengingangel]

thanks for the explanation, but im still not understanding this one. similarly to the person who posted the first question, i am confused on how the correct answer could be A, when the stimulus clearly says "primarily" --
which allows for the other desire to be to help others. thanks.

[Daniel Stern]

You are correct that the stimulus author, by using the term "primarily," is implicitly allowing for both motivations, but the author is also nonetheless concluding that one motivated "primarily" by the desire for praise does not deserve praise. This is the conclusion that we are trying to get to with our credited answer choice, so we need to eliminate any possibility that an action motivated primarily by the desire for praise somehow deserves praise -- say, by having another simultaneous, praiseworthy motivation.

We need answer choice A -- which is an explicit denial that both motivations can co-exist -- to get from the stated premise that we only deserve praise when we're motivated by a desire to help others to the conclusion that being motivated "primarily" by the desire for praise means we don't deserve any praise.

Recall that our Justify answer must allow the conclusion to be drawn 100% of the time: so here, we have to close that gap or hole in the argument that the author left by shifting to the term "primarily" in the conclusion.

Good luck in your studies,
Dan

[avengingangel]

Thanks -- that makes total sense now. This question is so tricky because the correct answer you're looking for will fill the gap between two different things within the conclusion, vs. just between the premises & the conclusion. It's a very subtle / nuanced difference, but your implicit/explicit explanation really helped me see the gap. Thanks again!

[Cflores17]

Hello Powerscore, can you please provide a more sufficient diagraming of the stimulus.

Thank you

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Cflores,

While the first sentence of the stimulus is necessary in connecting the idea of desire for praise to a desire for a favorable opinion of others (which comes up in the correct answer), it does not need be separately diagrammed. You can treat the desire for praise as the same term as the desire for the favorable opinions of others for diagramming purposes.

The only premise of the argument is the first half of the second sentence of the stimulus.

I'd diagram this:

Premise: MP -> AMDHO

(which means if an action merits praise, then it was motivated by the desire to help others)

We definitely want to take the contrapositive of this premise, as we will be using it.

The contrapositive would be diagrammed:

Not AMDHO -> Not MP

(which means if an action was Not motivated by the desire to help others, then it does Not merit praise)

(Note that I would use slashes rather than writing the word "Not" if I were diagramming this on scratch paper.)

The conclusion appears in the second half of the second sentence of the stimulus. One important thing to note in this conclusion is that the words "Not deserve praise" are synonymous with the term "Not merit praise." It is very important that we diagram this term the same way that we diagrammed "Not merit praise"(which we diagrammed "Not MP") in the contrapositive of the premise in order for the terms in our diagram to correctly link up.

So the diagram of the conclusion would be:

Conclusion: MDP -> not MP

(which means if an action is motivated by the desire for praise, then it does Not merit/deserve praise)

(Note, you may be wondering why I didn't include the word "primarily" in the conclusion, since that is mentioned in the actual wording of the conclusion. It turns out that it won't matter and adding it to the diagram just makes it more confusing/harder to follow. If you do want to include "primarily," you'll just have to realize that Answer A covers all desires for praise (whether primarily or not) when you get to this answer, making the "primarily" irrelevant.)

What we need to justify this conclusion is an answer that correctly links MDP to Not AMDHO so that we can link everything together in an "if A, then B, then C" chain.

Specifically what we want is:

MDP -> Not AMDHO

(which means if an action is motivated by a desire for praise (whether primarily motivated or not), then it is Not motivated by the desire to help others)

This would allow us to link the terms together as diagrammed:

MDP -> Not AMDHO -> Not MP

Which justifies our conclusion.

Answer A is exactly what we are looking for.

It can be diagrammed:

MDP -> Not AMDHO

(Remember that the words "a desire for the favorable opinions of others," which are used in this answer, are equivalent to "a desire for praise" as stated in the first sentence of the premise.