Q21 - Ethicist: A person who treats

[b91302310]

I understand why C is correct but cannot get why B is wrong.
The argument says that to treat others well out of compassion than out of cold concern of moral obligation is sufficient to be more worthy of praise. As stated by (B), the condition for deserving praise is met since a person feels compassion toward the people affacted by that person's action; however, it concludes that a person does not deserve praise. Doesn't it counter what is stated in the argument? So, why could this one be true?

Also, will the conclusion, that a person who treats other well is worthy of more praise, be affected by the additional condition mentioned in (B) (ie. these actions diminish the welfare of those people)?

Could any one explain it?

Thanks.

[aileenann]

Sure thing. This is a tricky EXCEPT question, so the first step I like to take on such questions is to rephrase. Here, I'll rephrase this to remind myself that I am looking for the answer that CANNOT be true. If it cannot be true, that means it'll have to be in direct conflict with what I have in my stimulus.

The easy way to see that (B) is not in direct conflict with my stimulus is that it's got an idea that's out of scope - diminishing of welfare. In fact, we don't know anything about diminishing of welfare, so we can't prove this wrong no matter how hard we try. You may feel a little confused because it's also unsupported -but for a could be true classification that's not a problem so long as the option is not patently impossible.

Does that make sense? Let me know if you have questions or follow up comments

[b91302310]

Thanks for the explanation! It's quite useful by the out of scope approach to determine whether it could be true/cannot be true under the stimulus.

Here, I still have a general question regarding conditional reasoning: If A-->B , and there is a new condition called C, since A assures the occurence of B, could we also get A+C -->B or shall we reconsider the result in terms of A+C ?

[aileenann]

I'm glad that helped!

As far as your more general question goes, I'm not quite sure I understand. I am assuming you mean you know that A -> B and then you also know that C has occurred. Well, as far as the conditional relationship is concerned, C is simply not relevant. If I have both A and C, I do have B, but only because A-> B. You shouldn't write this as A+C -> B because then you might do the contrapositive and think that -B-> -A or -C when in fact -B -> -A only. You have to be extra careful with these conditionals - they're one of the trickiest parts of the LSAT!

[b91302310]

I can explain my question in this example:

Premise :
If some one works hard, some one will be promoted. (WH-->P)

So, given the situation that some one works hard but argues with his/er supervisor (this is an additional condition), can we also assure that some one will be promoted based on the premise (WH-->P) ? Does the additional condition (arguing with a superviser) affect the relationship between WH and P ? Or, should we consider working hard together with arguing with a supervisor as a whole new condition so that we could not know whether someone will be promoted ?

[farhadshekib]

I can explain my question in this example:

Premise :
If some one works hard, some one will be promoted. (WH-->P)

So, given the situation that some one works hard but argues with his/er supervisor (this is an additional condition), can we also assure that some one will be promoted based on the premise (WH-->P) ? Does the additional condition (arguing with a superviser) affect the relationship between WH and P ? Or, should we consider working hard together with arguing with a supervisor as a whole new condition so that we could not know whether someone will be promoted ?

From the conditional statement you presented above, we only know two things that must be true:

1) If one works hard, then one will always be promoted.

WH --> P.

2) Also, I can conclude that If I am not promoted, then I did not work hard.

~ P ---> ~ WH.

The additional issue you mentioned (i.e. arguing w/ one's supervisor) would not stop me from getting promoted if I work hard.

In other words, when the sufficient condition has been met, the necessary condition MUST occur. In this context, If I work hard (but I smell like a foot), I will be promoted (regardless of my nasty stench).

Now, consider this statement: "If one is not promoted, then one has argued with one's supervisor".

Let's combine these statements.


~ P --> ~WH.

~ P --> AS.

~AS --> P

In other words, If one is not promoted, one does not work hard AND one has argued with one's supervisor.

However, If one does work hard, OR if one has NOT argued with one's supervisor, then one will be promoted.

In this context, we have two sufficient conditions that will result in promotion: that is, working hard and eschewing arguments with the boss...

If either one is met, the promotion will occur.

Make sense?

[MMeissner947]

can one of the instructors please explain this problem, I initially tried to diagram it but found that unhelpful and so I skipped and came back to it at the end with about 1.3 minutes left, yet still couldn't get my head around it. How should I approach this problem? Ohthatpatrick

[ohthatpatrick]

This is a MUST BE FALSE question, which has two main habits:

1. Provide a conditional in the stimulus, and then contradict it in the answer (LEFT happens, RIGHT doesn't)
or
2. Allow us to infer something in the stimulus, and then contradict it in the answer choice.

Students frequently confuse MBF with "bad inference". Those are not the same.
MBF = contradicts something in the information provided
BAD INFERENCE = can't be proven from information provided

The Ethicist's first sentence is basically saying
"Bob, who treats other people well, in part, because he cares about other people"
is more worthy of praise than
"Jeff, who treats other people well, but merely because his religion tells him he has to."

(Only instead of saying it's a RELIGIOUS moral obligation, they're just saying ANY sense of moral obligation)

Be nice to people. It's your moral duty. If you ALSO happen to LIKE being nice to people because you're compassionate, we'll praise you more.

2nd sentence:
This is ironic, since you can't actually change your feelings about whether you LIKE being nice to people.
Why are we giving you extra praise for the thing that's BEYOND your control?

==== analysis =====

Are there any conditionals?

We could turn the first sentence into a conditional if we wanted to force it:
"If you're nice to people in part because you WANT to be, then you get more praise than nice-out-of-duty people"

and we could turn the last idea into a conditional:
"If it's a feeling, then you can't choose to have it"
"If you can choose to do something, then it's not a feeling".

Are there any inferences we can make? (Can we apply the conditionals to any facts?)

We know that doing what is morally right is something we can CHOOSE to do, so we could infer that:
doing what's morally right is not a feeling

ANSWERS

(A) Doesn't contradict anything. "Which actions should be used to measure praise" is out of scope.

(B) Doesn't contradict anything. There's no binary about deserving / not deserving praise. We were only talking about "more deserving / less deserving".

(C) YUP! This contradicts the 2nd sentence, which is saying we stupidly give EXTRA PRAISE to people for something that's BEYOND their control.

(D) Doesn't contradict anything. Binary praise, whereas our information is about "more/less worthy of praise"

(E) Out of scope. Binary praise.