Logical Reasoning

PT115 · S2 · Q12 Politician: It is wrong for

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Politician: It is wrong for the government to restrict the liberty of individuals, except perhaps in those cases when to fail to do so would allow individuals to cause harm.

Facts

If failure to restrict wrong for govt wouldn't cause → to restrict the liberty harm of individuals

Publishing something is a liberty.

Being offensive doesn't cause harm.

Evaluate

"To offend doesn't cause harm"? Wow, test 39. What an old fashioned notion.

When we're looking to make inferences, we're looking for overlapping information. The 2nd and 3rd facts contain the ideas "liberty" and "harm" from the principle in the first sentence.

We heard something like "if there's no harm, don't restrict liberty".

And we were told that "offending is not harm". So maybe, if publishing is offensive, don't restrict it?

12.

Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the politician's statements?

  1. Correct

    It is not right for

    Why this is right

    Restricting the publishing of offensive literature wouldn't prevent harm, because something that is only offensive does not cause harm. And since publishing is a liberty, it would be wrong for the government to restrict harmless publishing.

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

    56% picked this

  2. It is not wrong for

    Illegal Opposite

    Our rule said, if restricting it wouldn't prevent harm, it would be wrong to restrict. This is saying, If allowing it would allow harm, it would not be wrong to restrict.

    24% picked this

  3. It is offensive for the

    Out of Scope: offensive government

    We don't have any rules that say when something is offensive. So we have no power to conclude that it was offensive for the government to do anything. We know that "if you offend, you haven't caused harm", so this answer is just trying to entice us into hearing that it starts with "offends" and ends with "not harmful". We also don't have any rules that say when something is harmful. We know that "to offend is not to cause harm". That's the limit of what we know about things being offensive.

    2% picked this

  4. It is not wrong for

    Out of Scope: wrong to publish

    We only have a rule for whether it's wrong for the government to restrict liberties. We don't have any rules we can follow about whether it's wrong to publish something.

    8% picked this

  5. It is not right for

    Too Strong: serious

    This answer is saying "as long as there isn't serious harm, the government shouldn't restrict the literature." Our rule didn't go off a standard of serious harm, just harm. The rule says that it is not right for the government to restrict the liberty of publishing literature, except maybe in cases when restricting it would prevent harm. This rule would tolerate some cases where the government restricted publication, in order to avert moderate harm, but this answer choice would not tolerate that.

    10% picked this

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