#15 - It has been said that understanding a person

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[knutson.m]

Hi.

I'm confused as to why the answer is A and not B.

Thanks!

[KSL]

Good afternoon,

I am got this question correct when taking this as a practice exam but missed it on the blind review choosing b instead of a. I am struggling with diagramming the conditional statements.

First sentence it is necessary (leads) to forgive entirely to understand a person completely.

Second sentence if it is necessary to understand something completely to forgive entirely THEN self forgiveness is imposssible as it is out of our reach to completely understand ourselves.

I prephrased to look for a flaw that says their is another was other than complete understanding to forgive yourself.

Omg relooking at the answers that is what A says...

Is this right.Any way to make it less confusing.? I felt like it was a layered conditional thought...

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there KSL and knutson.m, let me see if I can help. Looks like you have the diagrams about right, KSL. It's confusing because there is a combination of causal and conditional language here - the first sentence tells us that some folks thing complete understanding leads to (causes) complete forgiveness. The second tells us that if that is true, then we can never fully forgive ourselves because we can never fully understand ourselves. In other words, if the cause is absent, the effect must be absent. That fails to consider that there could be other ways to achieve the effect. We could perhaps forgive ourselves even if we do not fully understand ourselves.

Now, let's look at the abstract language of answers A and B and apply the details of the stimulus to them both. Turning abstracts into concrete language can really shed light on them!

Answer A: Treats the failure to satisfy a condition (understanding - you cannot understand yourself completely) that brings about a particular outcome (forgiveness is the outcome) as if (understanding) is the only way to bring about (forgiveness).

Winner!

Answer B: Confuses something that is necessary for an action to occur (forgiveness is necessary, understanding is the sufficient action - that's already weird, because understanding doesn't seem like an action) with something that necessarily results from that action (forgiveness necessarily results from understanding; understanding causes forgiveness). That sounds like mixing up a conditional claim for a causal claim - just because one thing is sufficient for another, it doesn't have to cause the other. But that's not what the author said - his premise was that if it IS a causal relationship, then in the absence of the cause the effect will also be absent. There's no mistaking a conditional premise for a causal conclusion, and so this answer, attractive as it may seem, does not describe the flaw.

Phew!

When faced with abstract answer choices in Flaw or Method of Reasoning questions, and in many Principle questions including "which one follows the principle" and "which of the following illustrates the principle", try this sort of checklist approach of applying the details of the stimulus to the language in your contender answers. Clarity will often follow!

[lina2020]

Hi PowerScore,

I was stuck between A and B on this question but after reading the explanation, I somewhat understand why the correct answer is A but still need some clarity. Is the flaw here that the stimulus changed from "understanding A PERSON" to "SELF-understanding" or are those both considered equivalent in this stimulus?

Also, it seems I'm having trouble with these causal conditional questions in general because I can't tell which takes precedence over the other and when to diagram versus not. Can you address this and/or point me in the direction of 2-3 similar questions that I could look at for better understanding? Thank you!

[Edited by PowerScore staff to remove copyrighted content.]

[j199393]

Hello! Even after reading the explanations I am having a hard time diagramming this stimulus as a combination of causal reasoning and conditional reasoning. Can someone show the accurate diagramming for this? Thank you!!

[momgoingbacktoschool]

Hey there KSL and knutson.m, let me see if I can help. Looks like you have the diagrams about right, KSL. It's confusing because there is a combination of causal and conditional language here - the first sentence tells us that some folks thing complete understanding leads to (causes) complete forgiveness. The second tells us that if that is true, then we can never fully forgive ourselves because we can never fully understand ourselves. In other words, if the cause is absent, the effect must be absent. That fails to consider that there could be other ways to achieve the effect. We could perhaps forgive ourselves even if we do not fully understand ourselves.

Now, let's look at the abstract language of answers A and B and apply the details of the stimulus to them both. Turning abstracts into concrete language can really shed light on them!

Answer A: Treats the failure to satisfy a condition (understanding - you cannot understand yourself completely) that brings about a particular outcome (forgiveness is the outcome) as if (understanding) is the only way to bring about (forgiveness).

Winner!

Answer B: Confuses something that is necessary for an action to occur (forgiveness is necessary, understanding is the sufficient action - that's already weird, because understanding doesn't seem like an action) with something that necessarily results from that action (forgiveness necessarily results from understanding; understanding causes forgiveness). That sounds like mixing up a conditional claim for a causal claim - just because one thing is sufficient for another, it doesn't have to cause the other. But that's not what the author said - his premise was that if it IS a causal relationship, then in the absence of the cause the effect will also be absent. There's no mistaking a conditional premise for a causal conclusion, and so this answer, attractive as it may seem, does not describe the flaw.

Phew!

When faced with abstract answer choices in Flaw or Method of Reasoning questions, and in many Principle questions including "which one follows the principle" and "which of the following illustrates the principle", try this sort of checklist approach of applying the details of the stimulus to the language in your contender answers. Clarity will often follow!

In more simple terms, isn't the flaw in the reasoning the fact that the conclusion is a mistaken negation of the causal statement in the first sentence? Or is this incorrect?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi lina, j199393, and mom,

Lina, the flaw here isn't the shift from "understanding a person" to "self-understanding" (i.e., "understanding your own self"). The first premise about understanding a person in general is broad enough to encompass understanding any person (including yourself, since you are a person). Rather the flaw is in thinking that just because a cause doesn't occur (just because the cause of understanding yourself completely as a person doesn't occur) the effect also doesn't occur (forgiving yourself completely also doesn't occur).

Here's a simple parallel argument to make it clear what the flaw is:
Premise: Being around sick children causes me to get sick.
Premise: I haven't been around sick children recently.
Conclusion: I must not have gotten sick recently.

See how, just because a cause (being around sick children) doesn't occur, it doesn't necessarily mean the effect (getting sick) doesn't occur? There could be other ways to get sick. Same thing in this stimulus: there might be other causes of me forgiving myself completely (other than just complete understanding of myself).

Your broader question about the mix of "conditional" and causal within a stimulus is a little trickier. In this stimulus, the two-word phrase "if so" isn't the introduction of a crucial conditional statement. Rather, in this context what that phrase is doing (its only function in the argument) is asking the reader to "assume that the opinion expressed in the first sentence is factually true" (i.e., take the fact in the first sentence as a premise). That makes the "if so" phrasing not the introduction to a conditional statement, but rather a rhetorical flourish allowing you to assume something is true for the purpose of the argument. Since it's not adding a new conditional relationship to the argument, I'm not worried about diagramming it. The causal reasoning then jumps out as the heart of the argument. The best way of getting around this issue is to identify the conclusion and then ask the question why the author thinks the conclusion is true (or, what evidence the author has given for the conclusion). By clearly separating out the conclusion and each of its supporting premises (or pieces of evidence), we can stay with the heart of the argument and properly interpret rhetorical flourishes like "if so." I don't have a ready list of mixed causal-conditional questions off the top of my head, but here are a couple questions to get you started with practicing it: PT 40, June 2003, LR2, Section 3, Question 5; and PT 75, June 2015, LR 1, Section 1, Question 12 (really more of a correlation/conditional mix here).

J199393, as I was suggesting to Lina, I don't think a diagram is necessary here, because the conditional phrase "if so" is really just a rhetorical gesture. Instead, clearly identify the cause and the effect in the initial premise. CAUSE: understanding a person completely. EFFECT: forgive the person entirely. Examine how the further premise (complete self-understanding is unattainable) relates to that relationship: it's telling you the cause is not occurring, at least when it comes to the "person" of yourself. Examine how the conclusion relates to that relationship: it's telling you the effect is not occurring. That's all it takes to get to the right answer here!

Mom, it's sort of a mistaken negation, although we reserve the technical description of Mistaken Negation for conditional relationships. In causal reasoning, though, a similar principle applies: if you know something that is a cause doesn't occur, that doesn't necessarily mean its effect does not occur.

I hope this helps all of you!

[appletree]

Hello!
Could someone please paraphrase in simple terms what B is trying to say?
Thank you!

[Robert Carroll]

apple,

Let's break it down. We need three items: the action, the thing necessary for the action, and the thing that necessarily results from the action.

Answer choice (B) is saying that the argument sets up two statements: "action something" and "action produces something", and thinks that the "somethings" are the same.

I think an argument like answer choice (B) would be the following:

"In order to play chess well, you need to be able to take in the entire board at a glance. So, playing chess well leads to taking in the entire board at a glance."

The premise is conditional, and the conclusion is causal. What Adam said above then seems relevant - that's not what's going on here, because the premise already talks about causality. Causality doesn't come in, for the first time, in the conclusion, like answer choice (B) seems to say.

Robert Carroll