#7 - Two things are true of all immoral actions. First, if

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

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

We must be careful breaking down this stimulus, because the first conditional statement adds a second requirement, and the last sentence provides a more simple condition:

First, if an immoral action is performed in public, it offends public sensibilities:

• Immoral
  
  and offends public
  
  Public

Contrapositive:

• immoral
  
  offends public or
  
  in public

Second, immoral actions are accompanied by feelings of guilt (notice that in this condition, public performance is not mentioned):

• Immoral accompanied by guilt

Contrapositive:

• accompanied by guilt immoral

The question stem asks for the answer choice which must be false. The correct answer choice will be disproved by one of the conditional statements above.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. According to the final contrapositive statement listed above, if an act is not accompanied by guilt, the act is not immoral. Since, according to the stimulus, every immoral act is accompanied by guilt, this answer choice cannot be true.

Answer choice (B): There is nothing in the stimulus which is contrary to this statement. It could be that the immorality of an act is by virtue of guilt—this would still lead to the same conditional statement:

• immoral accompanied by guilt

Answer choice (C): This is possible, as long as those guilty public actions are not immoral. Since this answer choice could be true, it is not the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D): This is possible, although we might have been caught by a mistaken reversal of the rule that says: if it is immoral and public it is offensive and causes guilt.

The rule is not that a guilty, offensive act must be immoral.

Answer choice (E): While this is not dictated by the conditional statements in the stimulus, it is possible, so this answer choice is incorrect.

[powerguy]

The question says 'x is accompanied by the feelings of guilt" -- does it mean causation or correlation ? I guess the question is about the term "accompanied by" -- does it imply causation or correlation?

Please help.

Thanks

[Steve Stein]

Hey Powerguy,

In that one, the rules can be a bit confusing; the author provides that if something is immoral, the follow is always true:

First, if performed in public, an immoral action offends public sensibilities:

immoral
and offends public sensibilities
public

Second, an immoral action is accompanied by guilt. Since the author provides that guilt accompanies all immoral actions, this conditional rule can be diagrammed as follows:

immoral accompanied by guilt

I hope that's helpful! let me know

~Steve

[Nikki Siclunov]

The following is a response to a private question regarding this October 2003, PT41 LR1 Q7 CANNOT be true question.

The stimulus outlines the following conditional principles:

NOT moral + Performed in public Offend

NOT moral Guilt

The stem asks us to identify a statement that CANNOT be true given the conditional relationships outlined in the stimulus.

Answer choice (A) cannot be true, because all immoral actions are accompanied by guilt. It’s impossible that some immoral actions aren’t. This must be the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (B) is incorrect, because we neither know or care why certain immoral actions are wrong.

Answer choice (C) could be true, as long as the actions in question are moral. We know nothing about what accompanies moral actions.

Answer choice (D) could be true as well. Maybe some moral actions are accompanied by feelings of guilt too. To conclude anything about what must be true of moral actions would be a Mistaken Negation of the principle.

(E) This is a Mistaken Reversal, so it’s a bad inference. But is it possible? Sure. The MR and MN of the original relationship are consistent with that relationship.

[ChicaRosa]

I understand why A is the correct answer but after reading the explanations on this question I'm confused about the graphing and why E is incorrect.

Why does immoral have to be included in the sufficient condition with performed in public if the first sentence doesn't include an "and" in it?

When I first did this problem I graphed it like this:

PIP= Performed in public
OPS= Offend public sensibilities
IA= Immoral actions
G= Guilt

PIP OPS
IA G

How can E be incorrect if the answer choice is a mistaken reversal? Wouldn't a mistaken reversal be false on a Must be False and Must Be True question?

Thanks

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Rosa,

The stimulus tells us, "If [immoral actions] are performed in public, they offend public sensibilities"

If we were to diagram this the way that you did, PIP OPS, the rule would tell us that anything performed in public is immoral. This is clearly not what the speaker believes, since we are talking about immoral actions.

If you want, you can diagram this rule with something along the lines of the following:
IAPIP OPS
where IAPIP would stand in for "Immoral Action Performed in Puplic." The benefit to keeping the sufficient as a multiple condition is that we can see connections, if any, to other conditional rules involving immoral actions.

Choice (E) is indeed the mistaken reversal of the second rule given to us. While it is a mistake to infer this, the mistaken reversal is not always impossible, it is simply unknown, given the conditions of the original rule. For that reason, it does not have to be false. Rather, it must be unproven or unknown.

[lathlee]

Hi. shouldn't the first rule be stated as Administrator


Immoral public offends public

now, i guess i am wrong since the adminstrator said that it should be regarded as following:

Immoral

and offends public

Public

But it seems like it goes against the general principle of to form a diagram of the conditional relationship. can you teach me what i am not seeing here?

[Jennifer Janowsky]

lathlee,

There isn't anything wrong with the way you diagrammed, as diagramming can be a matter of taste.

As said above:

If you want, you can diagram this rule with something along the lines of the following:
IAPIP OPS
where IAPIP would stand in for "Immoral Action Performed in Puplic." The benefit to keeping the sufficient as a multiple condition is that we can see connections, if any, to other conditional rules involving immoral actions.

[Tiffany]

Hi,

For Answer choice A, the book said that "if you interpret the second statement to apply to public actions, you will mistakenly think A could occur". Is this because in this way, we would be creating a Mistaken Negation which could be true and thus incorrect for answering the question?

Thank you!

[James Finch]

Hi Tiffany,

Exactly, the quote is getting at the idea that if one mistakenly believes guilt is only a necessary condition for immoral actions committed in public, which would create a diagram like:

Public Immoral Actions Offend Sensibilities + Guilt

while (A) would be saying

Public Immoral Actions Guilt

which as a Mistaken Negation could be true.

However, the correct diagram would be:

Immoral Action Guilt

and

Immoral ActionPublic Offend Sensibilities + Guilt

So in the case of (A), the first conditional relationship would still apply, although the second wouldn't, meaning (A) cannot be true.

Hope this helps!