PT101 · S2 · Q23 Essayist: The existence of a moral

Not Opinion vs. Fact Bad Evidence Match This answer describes a semi-famous Flaw we call Opinion vs. Fact, which is when the author treats opinion as fact. That would feel like this: Ben thinks that Marcy's drawing is political. Since no political drawings are allowed in the Spring Fair, Marcy's drawing won't be allowed in the Spring Fair. That argument is flawed by treating Ben's opinion as though it's a fact. This argument we read has nothing like that. The 2nd sentence talks about different belief systems, but the author never establishes reincarnation or supreme being as facts. The author's conclusion is trying to establish the fact that, "if human souls are immortal, then the bad will be punished". Did the premise say, "some people believe that if human souls are immortal, then the bad will be punished?" No. The author isn't leaning on any premise about people's beliefs. She's leaning on the premise in the first sentence.

This has the form, "From the claim that X, the argument concludes Y", so we would want to check on whether X matches evidence and Y matches conclusion. Did the evidence claim that "the immortality of human souls implies a moral order in the universe"? No. The evidence said the converse. "The existence of a moral order implies the immortality of human souls". We could stop reading there, since that's grounds for elimination. But the conclusion half of this answer also doesn't match. According to this answer, the conclusion says that "a moral order implies that human souls are immortal", whereas the conclusion actually says that "human souls being immortal implies that the bad will be punished".

The author does not consider karma/reincarnation to be the same as supreme being who metes out justice. The author is introducing those as variations on the idea of a moral order. But the conclusion acknowledges their distinctiveness by saying "however you want to represent a moral order ... whether it's the reincarnation way or the supreme being way ... my conclusion follows". If by "essentially the same", we're saying the author treats reincarnation and supreme being as essentially the same, because they're both moral orders in which the bad are punished and the good are rewarded, that's fine. We could say, "Yes, that's true, the author did do that. But we don't find anything objectionable about that." We're not complaining about the author's reasoning by saying "he considered these two different belief systems to be similar insofar as they are moral orders in which the bad are punished and good are rewarded".

When we see language like, "the premise restates the conclusion" or "the premise assumes the truth of the conclusion", that means Circular reasoning. We know that Circular Reasoning is almost always wrong, so we would never "guess" it's circular. We'd be safer guessing elsewhere. Had the final sentence really been a restatement of the first sentence, then we'd pick this answer. But the final sentence was a different claim, so it's not circular.