Logical Reasoning

PT120 · S3 · Q26 Students in a college ethics

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Students in a college ethics class were asked to judge whether two magazines had been morally delinquent in publishing a particular classified advertisement that was highly offensive in its demeaning portrayal of some people.

Background Facts

First magazine: tried to screen all classified advertisements and if they found any offensive, they would reject it for publication.

Second magazine: publish any advertisement received from subscribers.

Both magazines published an ad that was highly offensive to some people.

Conclusion

First magazine was morally delinquent. Second magazine was not.

Evaluate / Goal

Since our task is to pick a principle that blames the 1st but not the 2nd magazine, we should focus on the difference between the two.

The 1st one tried to catch offensive ads and filter them out. The 2nd one had a policy to just publish everything.

So let's look for something like,

That would apply to the 1st magazine but not to the 2nd one.

26.

Which one of the following principles, if established, provides the strongest justification for the judgment that the first magazine and not the second was morally delinquent?

  1. It is wrong to publish

    No Distinction

    This rule is saying "if you published something that could cause direct or indirect harm to innocent people, then you did something wrong". We could debate whether publishing the offensive ad counts as "directly / indirectly harming innocent people", but the easier way to know this answer is wrong is that this rule would apply equally to both the 1st and the 2nd magazine. They both published the offensive ad, so if "publishing offensive ad = did something wrong" then both magazines did something wrong.

    2% picked this

  2. Anyone regularly transmitting messages to

    Opposite

    This rule would make it seem like the 1st magazine was being morally responsible (since they were monitoring the content of the ads they were about to publish) whereas the 2nd magazine wasn't. We're trying to make the 1st magazine seem morally deficient and the 2nd magazine seem morally okay.

    7% picked this

  3. If two similar agents commit

    No Distinction

    This rule would apply equally to both the 1st and the 2nd magazine. Since both magazines committed two similar actions (publishing the offensive ad), according to this rule they're either both morally responsible or both not morally responsible. We need an answer that differentiates between the two.

    2% picked this

  4. Correct

    Failure to uphold a moral

    Why this is right

    This points to the causal difference-maker between the 1st and 2nd magazines. The students think the 1st magazine was morally delinquent because they set out to try to eliminate offensive ads from their publication, and they failed to eliminate the offensive one that got published. They "specifically committed themselves to upholding a standard of no offensive ads", but ended up publishing an offensive ad anyway. The 2nd magazine didn't commit themselves to upholding any standard. They had a policy of "we'll publish anything", so their failure to prevent an offensive ad from running in their magazine "is not necessarily a moral failing". In other words, "whether or not we consider your publishing of an offensive ad a moral failing comes down to whether or not you specifically committed yourself to trying to avoid publishing an offensive ad (as magazine 1 did, but magazine 2 didn't)."

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

    81% picked this

  5. A magazine should not be

    Doesn't Incriminate 1st Magazine

    This rule would have no power to support the idea that the 1st magazine was morally delinquent, since it looks like this: if an ad wouldn't be magazine shouldn't offensive to any ? be considered at subscribers fault for publishing This rule really has no applicability to either magazine, because they both published an ad that was offensive to subscribers. But seeing that it has no power to prove "morally delinquent" is probably the quickest way to see that it's useless for our goal of proving the 1st magazine was morally delinquent.

    8% picked this

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