Q22 - If violations of any of

[jasonleb1]

I've read this whole thread multiple times and, while I've come to understand that the equivocation of "routinely" and "never" is where the hole in the logic is, I still don't understand where the "sometimes" comes in. Isn't D a premise questioner? It reads to me like the answer choice is telling whoever is espousing the stimulus that he's wrong about his own society i.e. that society's explicit rules are only sometimes violated rather than routinely violated. Who are we to say that? I get the analogy with the ambulances and how it runs parallel to this argument but I am just not grasping where this "sometimes" has been pulled from and how it logically refutes his statement.

[maryadkins]

"Sometimes not punishing violations" is what the conclusion says should never happen. Because the opposite of/negation of "never" is "sometimes."

That's what the conclusion is saying: that we should never allow violations to be broken with impunity (not even sometimes!).

[hayleychen12]

I have exactly same question.

When I read the conclusion, I read it as " Thus, (in order to avoid chaos), a society ought never to allow any of its explicit rules to be broken with impunity", which I think is the wrong negation of the conditional logic in the premises.

Will A be a right answer if we change the conclusion into" Thus, a society ought not to allow its explicit rules to be routinely broken with impunity"

Any help!!!! Thx!!!

I have a problem with (A).

In my understanding the question has two problems.
a) The examiner is going from routinely to never
b) Let's, for arguments sake, imagine that the examiner had said "a society ought not routinely allow any violations to go unpunished". Is this a correct conclusion? Isn't he assuming, to reach this conclusion, that in order to not get chaos, a society should not routinely allow any violations to go unpunished? If that's the assumption isn't that a mistaken negation and that mistake is mentioned in (A).

quick question here--


the argument is assuming that we don't want chaos, right?
So if an answer said something like takes for granted that chaos is a bad thing, would it be a good answer?

Yep, that's right!

[ohthatpatrick]

The author's chain of reasoning is

If violations are routinely unpunished -> no moral guidance -> chaos results.

So if you don't want chaos, keep moral guidance, which means making sure that violations are routinely unpunished.

The author isn't assuming that "keeping moral guidance and routinely punishing violators" is a GUARANTEED way to avoid chaos (that a society WILL avoid chaos).

The author is saying
"if we DON'T routinely punish, chaos will result"
not
"if we DO routinely punish, chaos will not result" (illegal negation)

Take a more real world example:
If you swim in nuclear waste, you will expose yourself to large levels of radioactivity. If you expose yourself to large levels of radioactivity, you'll die.

So, (if you don't wanna die), you ought to never swim in nuclear waste.

Reasonable, right?

Am I assuming that "Someone will avoid death as long as they never swim in nuclear waste"?

No, sadly, no one will avoid death. I'm only giving advice to help someone avoid death as long as possible. I'm saying "this is a certain route to death, so assuming you don't want to die, you shouldn't take it."

I'm not saying "doing the opposite is a certain route to immortality."

Does that make sense?

[hayleychen12]

The author's chain of reasoning is

If violations are routinely unpunished -> no moral guidance -> chaos results.

So if you don't want chaos, keep moral guidance, which means making sure that violations are routinely unpunished.

The author isn't assuming that "keeping moral guidance and routinely punishing violators" is a GUARANTEED way to avoid chaos (that a society WILL avoid chaos).

The author is saying
"if we DON'T routinely punish, chaos will result"
not
"if we DO routinely punish, chaos will not result" (illegal negation)

Take a more real world example:
If you swim in nuclear waste, you will expose yourself to large levels of radioactivity. If you expose yourself to large levels of radioactivity, you'll die.

So, (if you don't wanna die), you ought to never swim in nuclear waste.

Reasonable, right?

Am I assuming that "Someone will avoid death as long as they never swim in nuclear waste"?

No, sadly, no one will avoid death. I'm only giving advice to help someone avoid death as long as possible. I'm saying "this is a certain route to death, so assuming you don't want to die, you shouldn't take it."

I'm not saying "doing the opposite is a certain route to immortality."

Does that make sense?

Thank you sooooooo much for your reply!!!

After dong this for a second time, I think I can see why A is wrong.

Premise: routinely unpunished → chaos

Conclusion: ( no chaos ) → no unpunished .

The conditional logic is actually perfectly tight if we don't look into details of the argument.
However, (A)is stating that the argument is assuming that : no unpunished → no chaos. Which never actually exists in the stimulus.

Am I right?

[MeenaV936]

I want to bump this because I have the same issue. Can someone explain how the speaker is not supposing that leaving violations unpunished leads to no chaos, which is a mistaken negation? That's why I picked A.

I have a problem with (A).

In my understanding the question has two problems.
a) The examiner is going from routinely to never
b) Let's, for arguments sake, imagine that the examiner had said "a society ought not routinely allow any violations to go unpunished". Is this a correct conclusion? Isn't he assuming, to reach this conclusion, that in order to not get chaos, a society should not routinely allow any violations to go unpunished? If that's the assumption isn't that a mistaken negation and that mistake is mentioned in (A).

quick question here--


the argument is assuming that we don't want chaos, right?
So if an answer said something like takes for granted that chaos is a bad thing, would it be a good answer?

Yep, that's right!