Q20 - Daniel: There are certain actions that moral duty

[deweykang]

Kinda stumped with this problem. Could you explain why D is the correct answer? Thanks!

[timmydoeslsat]

We know that Daniel believes a morally good action has, as a requirement, the right motivations. So of course a morally good action cannot be sufficiently brought about by fulfilling moral obligations, as we know it has to have the right motivations too.

Carrie disagrees with the suggested requirement of right motivations for morally good actions, as she thinks only moral obligations is a requirement.

So we know these two disagree over the requirements of a morally good action, or what is entailed in a morally good action.

(D) hits on this idea. We know that Daniel believes lacking this requirement of right motivations would preclude a morally good action. We know that Carrie believes in one requirement of morally good actions, so lacking right motivations is not enough reason to dismiss the idea of morally good actions from occurring.

[shariracquel]

Im still trying to understand why D is correct, D is a contrapositive of what Daniel says, correct? So is it correct to say that Daniel also disagrees w/ the contrapositive?

not right motivation ----> not morally good

??? Im confused, please help

[patrice.antoine]

Im still trying to understand why D is correct, D is a contrapositive of what Daniel says, correct? So is it correct to say that Daniel also disagrees w/ the contrapositive?

not right motivation ----> not morally good

??? Im confused, please help

Hey Shari!

(D) is actually verbatim to what Daniel is concluding. Daniel's argument is that unless (if not) performed with right motivations, then no action is morally good (Not RM ---> Not MG).

(D) is saying if wrong motivations (Not RM) then not morally good (Not MG). Same as above.

The contrapositive here is MG---> RM.

Daniel would absolutely agree with this answer choice.

Carrie on the other-hand would not as she states that the only thing required for an action to be morally good is that it fulfills a moral obligation (MG---> FMO). Remember, our necessary (required) part goes to the right of our conditional statement).

Daniel: MG --> RM

Carrie: MG---> FMO


There are different requirements/necessary conditions for both parties here. As such, Carrie would disagree with answer choice (D) while Daniel would agree.


Hope this helps!!

[shariracquel]

Im still trying to understand why D is correct, D is a contrapositive of what Daniel says, correct? So is it correct to say that Daniel also disagrees w/ the contrapositive?

not right motivation ----> not morally good

??? Im confused, please help

Hey Shari!

(D) is actually verbatim to what Daniel is concluding. Daniel's argument is that unless (if not) performed with right motivations, then no action is morally good (Not RM ---> Not MG).

(D) is saying if wrong motivations (Not RM) then not morally good (Not MG). Same as above.

The contrapositive here is MG---> RM.

Daniel would absolutely agree with this answer choice.

Carrie on the other-hand would not as she states that the only thing required for an action to be morally good is that it fulfills a moral obligation (MG---> FMO). Remember, our necessary (required) part goes to the left of our conditional statement).

Daniel: MG --> RM

Carrie: MG---> FMO


There are different requirements/necessary conditions for both parties here. As such, Carrie would disagree with answer choice (D) while Daniel would agree.


Hope this helps!!

This certainly did help.

Thank You,

sf

[hyewonkim89]

I was down to (B) and (D) and ended up choosing (B)...

To me, Daniel seems to disagree with (B) since he believes right motivations result morally good actions. And Carrie seems to agree with (B) because motivations are not subject to whether actions are morally good or bad.

What makes (D) better than (B)?

[tommywallach]

Hey Hye,

Answer choice (B) is not actually something either of them disagree with (as far as we know). Daniel says an action can't be good unless it has good motivations, but that doesn't make it good alone (it also has to fulfill a moral obligation). Carrie says motivations are entirely irrelevant, but she would definitely agree with (B), because it says that some actions with good motivations aren't good (i.e. motivation is irrelevant to morality).

Hope that helps!

-t

[mornincounselor]

Daniel: An action is not morally good simply because it fulfills a moral obligation.

Carrie: The only thing that can be required for an action to be morally good is that it fulfill a moral obligation.

I took from this that Daniel would believe that it takes more than simply a moral obligation for an action to be morally good.

I took Carrie to be saying that moral obligation alone is sufficient for an action to be considered morally good.

Therefore, I selected choice (B). But alas, I misread that choice. Choice (B) is talking about motivation not moral obligation.

It's actually the last sentence of Daniel's and the first of Carrie's which the question is asking for us to find a disagreement between. But, the one I mentioned is something else they could disagree about, right? It's like a flaw question where a number of possible answers could be correct but only one of them will be included amongst the choices?

Thanks,

[ohthatpatrick]

It's not technically accurate, but I like the gist of what you were thinking.

Carrie's sentence doesn't commit her to thinking that "fulfilling moral obligation" is sufficient.

Just because A is the only required thing for X, that doesn't mean that A is sufficient to guarantee X.

Think about it in a dating context. Maybe Sally has ONE dealbreaker when it comes to finding a partner. The partner MUST have good teeth.

Without good teeth, there is no WAY Sally will date someone.

But does that mean that good teeth are enough? Not necessarily.

Maybe Sally would like to see other traits like good dancer, good sense of humor, interesting fashion sense, love of reading, etc.

NONE of these add-ons are required in Sally's mind.

Someone might hate reading, but Sally would still consider them.

Someone might be a terrible dancer, but Sally would still consider them.

Her only REQUIREMENT is good teeth.

If you have bad teeth, you have NO chance with Sally.

So something can be the only requirement but still not be sufficient.

In general, Flaw questions (especially harder ones in the later part of the section) often have multiple issues. But Identify the Disagreement has rarely, if ever, been like that. The vast majority of these would allow us to pick one claim from each person's statements that butts heads with the claim we picked from the other's.

=== other answers ===
(A) We might infer that Carrie agrees since her reason for ditching motivations as a requirement for moral actions is that motivations are "out of our control". But we can't pin any talk of "possible to do" on Daniel.

(B) They would probably both agree with this. Neither person thought that right motivations by itself proved anything.

(C) Neither person discussed whether EVERY action that happens to fulfill a moral obligation was INTENDED to do so.

(D) Daniel, by his last sentence, agrees. Carrie, according to her last sentence, disagrees.

(E) Neither person said that acting on duty was sufficient to prove morally good.

[HughM388]

Based on what the stimulus tells us, I still don't see how we can conclude that Daniel and Carrie disagree about (D). To arrive at (D) we need to make a fairly audacious inference—which for an identify-the-disagreement question seems illicit, even if the question is at the back end of the section. Please, if anyone still reads and uses this forum, correct me where I'm wrong.

I think we can pretty quickly see that Daniel definitely agrees with the proposition in (D), which is clearly a restatement of Daniel's argument. But on Carrie's count, we know only that she believes that moral obligations are the sole requirement of a morally good action. Beyond that, the stimulus and (D) tell us nothing.

The palaver above about Sally and her requirement for good teeth is descriptive and nicely argued (though I will note that saying that "Sally has only one requirement" could just as plausibly mean that Sally will take all comers as long as they fulfill her single requirement).

But it doesn't explain how we can know that an action performed with the wrong motivations might also fulfill a moral obligation—which is, I think, the problem that most people encounter in this question. How do we know that such a scenario is even possible? Perhaps no action can be both wrongly motivated and yet fulfill a moral obligation (even now I'm imagining an LR question, disguised in suitably convoluted language, that plays upon such a potential incongruity).

That is the aforementioned inference that the question seems to be requiring us, recklessly, to make. Evidenced by this question, making such an illicit inference is allowable by LSAC. But on an identify-the-disagreement question, it seems to me that the points of disagreement should be fairly explicit, so that identifying them does not require making a leap of presumption.

It's made even more artificially, and thus cheaply, difficult because Dan and Carrie are talking about highly abstract, hypothetical notions. If they were talking about actual things of the concrete world (for example flavors of cake, and whether the flavor of the icing is the only thing that can make a cake delicious, or on the other hand if it's not the icing but the flavor of the cake itself, and where we know that there exist, in fact, different flavors of icing and cake; complete the analogy according to your imagination) the inferential leap this question induces would be reasonably supportable. But as it is—I am repeating myself here, and that's fine—do we even know if it's possible for an action to be wrongly motivated and yet morally obligated. I don't know that, and in evaluating (D) I wasn't prepared to presume that Carrie believed it; it seemed like a trap, in fact.

[Misti Duvall]

Question Type:
ID the Disagreement

Stimulus Breakdown:
Main point of Daniel's argument: - right motivation --> - morally good
Main point of Carrie's argument: morally good --> fulfills moral obligation

Answer Anticipation:
LOTS of tricky conditional logic here. With a stimulus like this, It can be helpful to use diagramming to reduce each argument to its conclusion, then compare and see if we can pinpoint a point of disagreement. The contrapositive of Daniel's conclusion is morally good --> right motivation. When compared with Carrie's conclusion (morally good --> fulfills moral obligation), we can see they disagree whehter what's required to be morally good is the right motivation or fulfilling a moral obligation.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Niether talks about something that's impossible do to (let alone anyone being required to do it), so we can eliminate.

(B) Daniel thinks all morally good actions require the right motivation, and Carrie doesn't think the right motivation is required at all. Neither talks about the right motivation guaranteeing anything.

(C) They're disagreeing about what is required in order for an action to be morally good. This answer just talks about moral obligations. Eliminate.

(D) This is exactly what we're looking for. Daniel would agree with this (if we diagram: - right motivation --> - morally good, which matches his conclusion), and Carrie would not. She came to the conclusion that only fulfilling a moral obligation is required to be morally good, meaning she'd consider an act to be morally good even with the wrong motivation.

(E) Niether talks about whether acting with the right motivation GUARANTEES an action is morally good. See Patrick's post above for a good discussion of guarantees v requires.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Try to distill complex arguments in ID the Disagreement questions as much as possible before you look for the point of disagreement, and diagram if possible. It can make understanding the stimulus, and evaluating the answers, easier.

#officialexplanation