Logical Reasoning

PT121 · S1 · Q16 Most business ethics courses and

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Most business ethics courses and textbooks confine themselves to considering specific cases and principles.

Conclusion

Business ethics courses and books should stop limiting themselves to specific cases and principles and instead include abstract ethical theory as well.

Evidence

The current approach fails to provide a framework for understanding specific principles.

Evaluate

Why does the author want business ethics courses to include abstract ethical theory? Because she laments that the current approach fails to help students understand specific principles.

So we can tell she's assuming that .

If we were trying to object to this argument, we might say,

So the author could strengthen her argument by establishing that there is some compelling reason why we care whether or not students understand the ethical principles.

Goal

Look for a Linking answer joining "abstract ethical theory" to "providing framework for understanding specific principles".

Or look for an answer that makes us think this supposed causal difference-maker (whether or not students have a framework for understanding principles) is valuable.

16.

Which one of the following, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning above?

  1. A moralizing approach that fails

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: a moralizing approach Out of Scope: diversity of rules It's not clear what "a moralizing approach" is, but it doesn't seem to match anything described. We would probably call the current approach "a pragmatic approach", since they're considering how principles would apply to specific real world cases. The author is suggesting a mix of "pragmatic / theoretical" because she wants to include some of the abstract ethical justification for the principles. But the argument doesn't seem to discuss a 'moralizing approach' or to be concerned about whether or not our approach captures the diversity of ethical rules.

    3% picked this

  2. Courses that concentrate mainly on

    Out of Scope: role-playing

    Bad news for this answer, we never talked about courses that concentrate mainly on role-playing. The current courses consider specific cases and principles, so that may involve role-playing (students pretending to be certain people within the world of that case study), but we have no way to think that these courses mainly feature that. Good news for this answer, now we all know the plural forms of "persona" is really weird!

    1% picked this

  3. People have no obligation to

    Too Weak

    If we look at this as conditional logic (since it has "unless"), it's saying this: if you don't learn ? you won't be obliged to abstract ethical always behave ethically theory Okay, it's not nothing. The author is suggesting we include abstract ethical theory and this answer is saying, "if students don't learn it, then they aren't obligated to be ethical in 100% of circumstances". That's actually a very weak idea, though. If you don't learn this, then there is at least one situation in which you're not obligated to behave ethically (this could mean something as dumb as "while brushing your teeth, you're not obligated to behave ethically"). A strong idea would be if and only if you study you will feel a strong abstract ethical theory obligation to behave ethically In other words, this answer doesn't tell us that we have anything to gain by including abstract ethical theory. It tells us that by excluding abstract ethical theory, we won't have people with a permanent obligation to behave ethically. But since that seems like such an extreme, far-fetched standard, it doesn't really feel like we're losing anything. Did we ever have a chance at shaping people who would feel obliged to behave ethically in 100% of cases?

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    Abstract ethical theory is the

    Why this is right

    This answer has way more to do with the reasoning of the argument than (C) did. (C) seemed to present a reason to potentially agree with the conclusion, but this answer provides the crucial missing link to the reasoning. Premise: current approach fails to provide framework for understanding specific principles Conclusion: (to fix this), we should add abstract ethical theory to the current approach Assumption: abstract ethical theory would provide a framework for understanding specific principles. This answer provides us that missing link, on steroids (the most appropriate framework!) Naturally, the stronger the better on Strengthen / Weaken / Paradox.

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

    73% picked this

  5. An ethics course should acquaint

    Out of Scope: wide range

    We know our author thinks an ethics course should acquaint students with a framework for understanding specific principles, but she didn't say anything about whether it should acquaint students with a wide range of principles.

    19% picked this

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