Logical Reasoning

PT120 · S3 · Q20 Philosopher: It is absurd to

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Philosopher: It is absurd to argue that people are morally obligated to act in a certain way simply because not acting in that way would be unnatural.

Conclusion

It's absurd to say that people are morally obligated to act in way X, because acting in way not-X would be unnatural.

Evidence

An unnatural action is either a violation of the laws of nature, or a statistical anomaly.

You can't act in a way that violates the laws of nature, and the fact that something isn't usually done isn't a good reason not to do it.

Evaluate

There aren't any keywords indicating the conclusion, so we need to mainly identify it from the fact that the first sentence has the opinion of a Rebuttal. Since our author is saying, "people claiming X are being absurd", she will need to defend that position, and the rest of the paragraph tries to defend that position.

Since this argument is pretty hard to understand, it might help to come up with an example of something where "acting that way would be unnatural".

Maybe we could say . According to this position the philosopher is fighting, we are morally obligated to avoid giving our Dad flowers on Mother's Day because doing so would be unnatural.

That does sound absurd!

The philosopher digs in to this concept of "unnatural". She's like, which sense of "unnatural" do we mean:

1. unnatural, like transcending natural law? outside the realm of physics? or 2. unnatural, like 'weird, not customary'?

Her final sentence is exploring both of those options and saying, if we mean #1, then the original position is saying, . The author is like,

if we mean #2, then the original position is saying, And the author is like,

Goal

How would we describe the argument in general terms?

The author sort of creates an either / or (does "unnatural" mean impossible or unusual) and then follows both roads to say, .

We might seen language like the author considers two options and rules them out. Or we might see something like, .

20.

Which one of the following most accurately describes a technique used in the philosopher's argument?

  1. undermining a concept by showing

    Bad Premise Match

    The author's conclusion is undermining a concept. What is that concept? you're morally obligated to act naturally Does the author ever say that if we accepted that "we are all morally obligated to act naturally" that this would violate a law of nature? No. The author brought up violating laws of nature when she was interpreting "act naturally" to mean "don't violate a law of nature".

    8% picked this

  2. Correct

    stating the definition of a

    Why this is right

    Yes, this happens (which is our only metric of right / wrong). The author states the definition of "an unnatural action". She says, "an unnatural action is either a violation of the laws of nature or a statistical anomaly."

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

    60% picked this

  3. using statistical findings to dispute

    Bad Premise Match

    The author is trying to dispute a claim, the claim that "we're morally obligated to act naturally". Does she ever discuss any statistical findings in the evidence? Heck no.

    1% picked this

  4. undermining a claim by showing

    Bad Premise Match

    The author is undermining a claim, the claim that "we're morally obligated to act naturally". Does the author do so by showing that the claim is self-contradictory, that by acting naturally we would be doing the opposite of what we're morally obligated to do? No. The author doesn't try to argue that the claim contradicts itself. The author is arguing the claim is absurd, which is synonym for "dumb / meaningless / silly". A self-contradiction is a very specific hard-to-achieve kind of thing. SELF-CONTRADICTION I am not speaking English right now. The Sun always rises in the East, except today it rose in the West

    29% picked this

  5. using empirical evidence to support

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: empirical evidence Out of Scope: support on over another There isn't any empirical evidence discussed (observable measurable data). The author provides two possible definitions for the key term "unnatural action", but she never argues for one over the other. She just shows how whichever definition you choose, you still get an absurd original position. Also, amusingly, we could never pick this answer since it implies (B). Clearly, according to this answer choice, the argument did define a key term, so we couldn't pick (E) and eliminate (B).

    2% picked this

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