#18 - People cannot be morally responsible for things over

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must be True—SN. The correct answer choice is (E)

The stimulus consists of conditional principles and can be somewhat confusing. You need to focus on whether the stimulus leads to some conclusion. The governing principle in the stimulus is:

• No Control Not morally responsible for action or outcomes

The last portion of the stimulus states that everyone acts in ways that are outcomes of treatments they experienced as an infant and had no control over. That means that the stimulus leads to the conclusion that every single person sometimes acts in ways for which the person cannot be held morally responsible.

Since you are asked to identify what, logically speaking, must be true, you should focus on that logical outcome of the principles in the stimulus.

Answer choice (A): This choice states that infants should never be held morally responsible for their actions. While that may be reasonable, it does not follow logically from the stimulus. The stimulus states that sometimes infants are not able to control how they are treated, which means that there is a given group of actions that infants cannot be morally responsible for, but it does not logically support the idea that infants should never be held morally responsible for any of their actions, so this choice is wrong.

Answer choice (B): This choice may have been attractive, because you may have assumed that the “commonly performed actions” include those that everyone performs as an outcome of some treatment commonly received as infants. However, when the stimulus states that everyone performs actions that are the outcomes of treatments received as infants, that logically implies neither that the actions nor that the treatments are the same from person to person, so this choice is unjustified and incorrect.

Answer choice (C): First of all, this choice should be immediately discarded as it does not follow from the clearly intended line of discussion. The argument grants that it is difficult to determine whether adults are responsible for treatment that they receive as adults, but focuses on treatment received as infants. Furthermore, the phrase “difficult to determine” does not imply that the answer is fairly often yes, and fairly often no. The difficulty of determining an outcome for certain is not always related to the likelihood of correctly guessing the outcome.

Answer choice (D): This choice offers the principle “Control→Morally Responsible,” which is a Mistaken Negation of the principle in the stimulus. This choice does not follow logically, and is incorrect.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. If everyone sometimes performs acts for which they are not morally responsible, that means that no-one should be held morally responsible for every act one performs.

[rachue]

Hi, I understand why E is correct, but I'm trying to better understand why A is wrong.

As stated in the explanation, the general conditional reasoning running through the stimulus is this:

No Control→Not morally responsible for action or outcomes

The stimulus states that "infants clearly cannot control." If an infant has no control, then doesn't that mean it is not morally responsible for its actions? Thus, shouldn't A be correct?

I know I'm missing something very crucial in the analysis of this question. Even after reading the explanation online, I still can't put my finger on it.

Thanks in advance!

[Nikki Siclunov]

The last sentence of the stimulus states:

"Everyone, however, sometimes acts in ways that are inevitable consequences of treatment received as an infant, and infants clearly cannot control, and so are not morally responsible for, the treatment they receive."

You know that infants are not morally responsible for the treatment they receive. This does not mean, however, that an infant should never be held morally responsible for an action that infant has performed, since it is possible that some of his/her actions are not the inevitable consequences of the treatment s/he received. They key here is the word "sometimes": everyone sometimes acts in ways that are inevitable consequences of treatment received as an infant. Consequently, we can infer that there are some actions for which infants are not morally responsible (namely, the actions that result from how they are treated). However, it is possible that some of their actions are not the result of how they were treated, and hence there may be some actions for which infants may be held responsible.

If answer choice (A) stated "An infant should not always be held morally responsible for an action that infant has performed," that would make answer choice (A) correct as well.

Hope this helps!

[rachue]

It's so tricky with those little words. Thanks, that does help.

[satipod]

Hello!

Could someone please help me with the diagramming of #18 (People behaving morally). I've seen this question before taking this practice test- although I can't remember where- but it's a tricky one because there are so many conditions so I'm still struggling with it.

Thank you much!

[Adam Tyson]

You're right about 18 having lots of conditions! Let's see if we can boil it down some:

First sentence - C (no control over )-> MR (not morally responsible)

The second sentence extends that reasoning - MR -> RC (not responsible for consequences)

The next two sentences aren't conditional - just ask yourself what they mean in the big scheme of things. Something like: One category of things over which we may have no control (and hence are not morally responsible for) is "the way we are treated (by others)". Then we add that infants can never control the way they are treated.

Then we move from purely conditional relationships to pure logic: Everyone sometimes fits into the category of "people who act in a way that results from actions over which they had no control" (because our actions are sometimes the consequence of the way we were treated as infants).

What does all this add up to? Well, if infants have no control over how they are treated, and they are therefore not morally responsible for that treatment OR for the consequences of that treatment, and if EVERYONE at least once (sometimes means at least once, right?) behaves in a way that is a consequence of that treatment, then EVERYONE must, at least once, perform an action for which they cannot be held morally responsible. And that's answer choice E!

The wrong answers:

A) The problem here is that it deals with the actions that infants themselves perform, and that's not the issue the stimulus deals with. The stimulus is about controlling the way we are treated, not the way we ourselves behave.

B) New information in this Must Be True question pops up in the form of "commonly performed actions". We've got no information about what those are.

C) A bit of a shell game answer here - it talks about when we SHOULD be held morally responsible, while our stimulus only deals with when we SHOULD NOT be. No way to draw any conclusions about when we SHOULD be.

D) Same problem in this as in C - we have no way to draw a conclusion about when we should be held responsible.

Okay, that wasn't really boiled down - more like blown up! But I hope it helped.

Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT Instructor

[satipod]

Thanks so much, that helps a lot. Looks like I had the diagram right for #18 but didn't make the right connection. Makes sense now though. Gracias!

[Johnclem]

Hi,
I diagrammed this wrong because of the word "people ".. According to my bible people who is a sufficient condition. How can I avoid this ?

People are not responsible --> not in control
Control --> morally responsible


Thanks
John

[Jonathan Evans]

John,

Thanks for bringing up this topic, since it bears discussion.

In the Logical Reasoning Bible, "People who" is one of the phrases used often to introduce a sufficient condition. It is important to note that the specific syntax "People who" is crucial as the term "people" by itself does not necessarily introduce a sufficient condition. Hence, to begin, I would differentiate between a sentence in which "People who" occurs from one in which only "people" occurs, insofar as constructing a conditional relationship is concerned.

Further, one must always read the sentence and decide from the context what the necessary and sufficient conditions are. For instance, I could posit that "People who have studied biology are among those without whom it is impossible to form an effective Space Shuttle crew." In this situation I would diagram the conditional thus:

Effective Space Shuttle crew contains people who have studied biology

It is always necessary to ask oneself "what is by itself sufficient to guarantee the occurrence of something else?" or "what is required at a minimum to make something else possible?"

The common words and phrases in the Bible are an invaluable resource but (as the book notes) by no means an exhaustive list of the ways sufficient and necessary conditions may occur. Especially on the most difficult LSAT problems, the test writers like to introduce unfamiliar and difficult constructions that vitiate some of the shortcuts.

[disraelyan]

John,

Thanks for bringing up this topic, since it bears discussion.

In the Logical Reasoning Bible, "People who" is one of the phrases used often to introduce a sufficient condition. It is important to note that the specific syntax "People who" is crucial as the term "people" by itself does not necessarily introduce a sufficient condition. Hence, to begin, I would differentiate between a sentence in which "People who" occurs from one in which only "people" occurs, insofar as constructing a conditional relationship is concerned.

Further, one must always read the sentence and decide from the context what the necessary and sufficient conditions are. For instance, I could posit that "People who have studied biology are among those without whom it is impossible to form an effective Space Shuttle crew." In this situation I would diagram the conditional thus:

Effective Space Shuttle crew contains people who have studied biology

It is always necessary to ask oneself "what is by itself sufficient to guarantee the occurrence of something else?" or "what is required at a minimum to make something else possible?"

The common words and phrases in the Bible are an invaluable resource but (as the book notes) by no means an exhaustive list of the ways sufficient and necessary conditions may occur. Especially on the most difficult LSAT problems, the test writers like to introduce unfamiliar and difficult constructions that vitiate some of the shortcuts.

Gonna bump this cause i'm reviewing it as well..

So why exactly is the first sentence structured as such

NOT control -> NOT MR

instead of NOT MR -> NOT CONTROL

This is monumental and looks like the test writer purposely made it hard to diagram so for someone like me who diagrams the latter answer D looks super appealing but that is in fact the fallacy of the inverse. These ambiguities in conditional statements make it so difficult for me I find myself sitting here confused how to diagram and it kills time.