Terry: Some actions considered

Answer choices

1. A

   Wrong Flaw4% picked this

   presupposing that if a certain property distinguishes one type of action from another type of action, then that property is one of many properties

   This is definitely not describing an illegal backwards conditional move. It's saying that both authors made some flaw of thinking, "If X is a crucial difference between A and B, then there must be many differences between A and B." We can't match either part of that to their arguments.

   4%
2. B

   Wrong Flaw7% picked this

   presupposing that if most actions of a certain type share a certain property, then all actions of that

   This is definitely not describing an illegal backwards conditional move. It's saying that both authors made some flaw of thinking, "If most actions of type X have property A, then all actions of type X have property A". We can't match either part of that to their arguments. It wasn't a "most vs. all" or "probably true vs. certainly true" type flaw.

   7%
3. C

   Wrong Flaw5% picked this

   presupposing that if a certain property is shared by actions of a certain type in a given society, then that property is shared by

   This is definitely not describing an illegal backwards conditional move. It's saying that both authors made some flaw of thinking, "Within society X, actions of type A always have property B, thus in all societies, actions of type A have property B." This would be a sampling flaw, assuming that what is true of one society is true of all societies. But neither author made a sampling flaw.

   5%
4. D

   Correct75% picked this

   presupposing that if an action’s having a certain property is necessary for its being a certain type of action, then having that property is

   Why this is right

   Seeing the words "necessary and sufficient" would be the shortcut for guessing this is our answer, since confusing Nec and Suff is just another way of saying "used a conditional statement backwards". To take Terry as an example, he established that "favorable consequences" is a property necessary of all good actions (good, only if favorable consequences). Then he says, "some bad actions have favorable consequences", and acts like that property is sufficient to prove that those bad actions are therefore a type of good action. Pat is saying that any action that is bad would be required to have the property of "no favorable consequences". She then says, "some good actions have no favorable consequences" and then proceeds to act like that property is sufficient to prove that those good actions are therefore a type of bad action.

   Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   75%
5. E

   Wrong Flaw9% picked this

   presupposing that if a certain property is shared by two types of action, then that property is the only property distinguishing the two types

   This is definitely not describing an illegal backwards conditional move. It's saying that both authors made some flaw of thinking, "If X is something that actions A and B have in common, then the only thing different about A and B from all other types of actions is X." We can't match either part of that to their arguments.

   9%