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

[jm123]

I want to make sure I understand properly why A is right. Is it because this argument is saying you cannot know a person's intent, therefore you can't tell if that person's action is moral, and so, you should evaluate the consequences of an action rather than its morality.


Answer choice A states: The intention of an action is indispensable for an evaluation of its morality. In other words, evaluation of its morality the intention of an action. We can never know a person's intent (taking away the necessary condition) therefore, we cannot evaluate its morality according to the contrapositive and this would strengthen the argument in the stimulus.

[am2gritt]

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.

Hi Kristina.

Thanks for the explanation. After reviewing this question, I just want to double-check that my reasoning is sound.

After consulting the question and your explanation several times, I can see that the stimulus does not establish a conditional relationship between the premise and the subsidiary conclusion. Without one, the statements do not jointly lead to the conclusion.

As such, AC (A) is correction because it establishes a conditional relationship between the two statements, allowing the conclusion to follow.

AC (A): Know morality know intention
Contrapositive: NOT know intention NOT know morality

Since the premise establishes that we can know someone's ulterior motives (intentions), then we know that this contrapositive is, in fact, the case. Therefore, one should evaluate the consequences of an action rather than its morality because we cannot know the morality of one's actions.

Is my reasoning sound here?

Thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

jm123 and am2gritt, it looks like you both reasoned this out the same way, and you are both correct! Nice job! The contrapositive of answer A closes the gap between the first premise and the intermediate conclusion, thereby strengthening the argument. Bravo!

[Mozart]

Hi,

When reading the stimulus of a Strengthen-PR question, are there any ways to predict whether I'm looking to strengthen the reasoning between the premise and intermediate conclusion, or between a premise and the main conclusion?
For this question, I spent a lot of time looking for an answer choice that would connect "therefore, it is impossible...is moral" to "and so one...than its morality," since that seems to be the typical way to strengthen the argument of a Strengthen-PR.

Thank you so much for your help!

[Paul Marsh]

Hey Mozart!

I like the way you're thinking on this question. You are totally correct that generally on Strengthen-PR questions, we want to connect the main conclusion (most commonly a "rogue" element in the conclusion) back to the premises via a Principle. If you can consistently attack Strengthen-PR questions that way, I suspect you will find yourself doing very well on them. Now, this question is indeed a bit unusual in that instead connects presents a Principle that ties the premise to the sub-conclusion. Per your question, if we do end up with a question like this one where we have both a conclusion and a sub-conclusion, I don't think there's a way to "predict" which one the Principle will connect the premises to. The best method is simply to be ready for both!

Again, on Strengthen-PR questions we can generally expect what you said (for the Principle to tie the main conclusion back to the premises), but if there's a sub-conclusion in the argument then take the extra second to also Pre-Phrase a Principle that would involve that.

Hope that helps!

[blaisebayno]

Hi there,

I do not understand how it can be indispensable to know the intent behind someone's actions to determine morality if the stimulus states that one can NEVER know the intent behind someone's actions.

[kolerv55s]

Hi there,

I do not understand how it can be indispensable to know the intent behind someone's actions to determine morality if the stimulus states that one can NEVER know the intent behind someone's actions.

That helps justify the IC(It is impossible to tell whether someone's action is moral).

P: One can never tell whether a person is acting from an ulterior motive
IC: Therefore, it is impossible to tell whether someone's action is moral

A is saying: To determine if an action is moral, you need to know the intention(ulterior motive).

My problem with this question is that this is the first time I've seen it test the gap between a premise and an IC. I was looking for something to justify the main conclusion which was that we should evaluate the consequences of action instead of its morality. But I guess it does justify that because we can never evaluate morality based on the argument.

[katehos]

Hi blaisebayno and kolerv55s!

Great work on this problem The principle illustrated in (A) helps fill the gap between the first premise and the intermediate conclusion!

In terms of your problem, kolerv55s, it may be helpful to consider how strengthen questions call for an answer choice that strengthens the argument to ANY degree. If we envision the argument like layers of a cake, the first premise is the first layer, the IC is the second, and the C is the third/top layer. If we strengthen the IC by adding another layer between the first premise and the IC, this makes the whole cake bigger and taller -- including the top layer, the conclusion! So, even though the principle most directly fits between the first premise and the IC, it's still strengthening the main conclusion.

I hope this helps!
Kate