#12 - After several attempts to distract his young parrot

[rek230]

Hi,

I don't think this question has been covered in this forum and I am having troubles with seeing why answer C is correct. The conclusion relating to George states that "since chewing the furniture would not have hurt the bird,George should not have hit it".

Answer C says "physical discipline should be used only when necessary to correct behaviour that could result in serious harm to the animal". The bird chewing furniture wouldn't have resulted in serious harm, so I am confused why this answer is correct.

Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Rek,

I agree that answer choice (C) is not correct, and fortunately it's not the right answer! Answer choice (B) is correct.

Thanks!

[queenbee]

Hi -
I selected C because Carla doesnt generally approved of physical discipline. I thought that might suggest that it should only be used if other things fail. Would you please let me know why this is incorrect?
Thank you
Neeli

[Luke Haqq]

Hi Neeli!

Happy to address why answer choice (C) is incorrect. We're asked for an answer choice that would justify both George's and Carla's actions. Answer choice (C) states, "Using physical discipline to train an animal is justified only when all alternative strategies for correcting undesirable behavior have failed." We can then see if this would justify the judgments about their actions.

George:
Carla:

Answer choice (C) doesn't seem to clearly justify either of their actions. We're told that George made "several attempts to distract" his parrot, which falls short of him taking "all alternative strategies." In addition, there's no indication that Carla exhausted "all alternative strategies." This answer choice therefore doesn't clearly do anything to the conclusions reached about their actions, namely, the conclusions that George's actions were not justified and Carla's actions were justified.

George: ?
Carla: ?

By contrast, answer choice (B) states, "When training an animal, physical discipline should be used only when such discipline is necessary to correct behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal." Using conditional reasoning, we could diagram this as:

physical discipline ok avert harm to animal

If a given instance of physical discipline was ok/justified, then it must have done to avert harm to the animal. The contrapositive of this would be:

avert harm to animal physical discipline ok

This would justify the conclusion that George should not have hit his parrot--his action was not done to avert harm to the animal, therefore it was not justified (the contrapositive). The language of (B) also suggests a biconditional relationship:

avert harm to animal physical discipline ok

That is, if an action (of physical discipline) was done to avert harm to the animal, then that physical discipline was ok. And if a given act of physical discipline was ok, that means it must have been done to avert harm to the animal. Based on this language, Carla was justified in disciplining her puppy because her action stopped behavior that could result in serious harm to the animal. Answer choice (B) thus justifies the conclusion that George should not have hit his bird but that Carla was justified in hitting her puppy.