Logical Reasoning

PT113 · S4 · Q15 Editorial: The threat of harsh

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Editorial: The threat of harsh punishment for a transgression usually decreases one’s tendency to feel guilt or shame for committing that transgression, and the tendency to feel guilt or shame for committing a transgression reduces a person’s tendency to commit transgressions.

Conclusion

Increasing the severity of legal penalties for breaking the law may increase people's tendency to ignore the welfare of others.

Evidence

Increasing threat of severe penalty for breaking the law decreases tendency to feel guilt or shame when breaking the law, whereas tendency to feel guilt or shame reduces the tendency to break the law.

Evaluate

There is essentially a three part causal sequence described: threat of legal guilt / shame tendency to penalty → for breaking → break law goes up law goes down goes up

The author basically establishes that increasing severity of penalties might create a feedback loop that leads to more crimes.

There is a big language shift, though, from "amplify people's tendency to commit transgression" in the premise, to in the conclusion.

Goal

Look for an answer saying ?

Or look for any answer that, when negated, would allow us to argue that we could increase the severity of legal penalties and not see an uptick in people ignoring the welfare of others.

15.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the editorial's argument?

  1. Legal penalties do not determine

    Out of Scope: morality

    At no point in the argument did we discuss morality, so we have no idea what the author thinks about this.

    3% picked this

  2. Correct

    At least some actions that

    Why this is right

    This connects the language in the premise "more severe penalties --> more transgressions" to the language in the conclusion, "more severe penalties --> more ignoring welfare of others". We love weak language on Necessary Assumption, because when you negate weak language you get a strong idea, and our task on Nec Assump is "which answer, when negated, most weakens". When we negate "some" (which means "one or more"), we get "none" (which means "zero"). So the negation of this answer says, "ZERO actions that involve ignoring the welfare of others are transgressions." They NEVER overlap. You could do something that increases the likelihood of transgressions and that wouldn't mean any increase in ignoring the welfare of others, since transgressions are never actions ignoring the welfare of others.

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

    71% picked this

  3. People who are concerned about

    Too Strong: tend to

    Potential criminals who feel the threat of a legal penalty are probably "concerned about a threat to their own well-being". But they are just one slice of that crowd. I'm not going to be committing any crimes, but I'm still concerned about a threat to my well-being (coronavirus, among other things). It's pretty safe to say that almost everyone is concerned about threats to their well-being. Is the author assuming that people tend to be more concerned about themselves than about the welfare of others? That's way too broad. It goes well beyond the scope of this argument, which is only about the effect raising legal penalties will have on people ignoring the welfare of others.

    18% picked this

  4. The threat of harsh punishment

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: Threat vs. carried out Too Strong: only if This conditional answer accuses the author of having made this argument move: Threat is never ? threat of harsh punishment carried out doesn't deter transgressions Our author never made that move.

    3% picked this

  5. Everyone has at least some

    Too Strong: everyone

    Our author doesn't have to assume that every single person in existence has at least some tendency to feel guilt or shame for committing bad transgressions. It doesn't hurt her argument if some sociopath named Gus feels no guilt or shame for his transgressions. The conclusion is so weakly worded, "increasing severity may increase tendency to ignore welfare", that the author is certainly not committing herself to any strong ideas.

    5% picked this

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