Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S1 · Q22 If violations of any of a society’s

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If violations of any of a society’s explicit rules routinely go unpunished, then that society’s people will be left without moral guidance.

Conclusion (Thus)

A society ought never to allow any of its explicit rules to be broken with impunity.

Evidence

violations of any people chaos explicit rule go → left without → results routinely moral unpunished guidance

Evaluate

The author is assuming that society ought to avoid chaos, and we should probably go along with that common sense assumption. It would be an unlikely answer to say,

The contrapositive of that conditional chain would say,

Isn't that what the conclusion is saying? Let's look closer.

What we said: don't let any explicit rule go routinely unpunished

What the conclusion says: never allow any explicit rule to go unpunished

What's the difference? The contrapositive of the chain the author presented in the evidence is saying we shouldn't let a rule go routinely unpunished. The conclusion is saying we shouldn't ever let a rule go unpunished.

Consider an example -- society has an explicit rule that you're not allowed to run a red light. You're a cop and you pull someone over for running a red light. They tell you that they're having a bathroom emergency and are rushing home / or you see they have a pregnant person in the backseat about to give birth. Should you punish them for running the red light or let them go unpunished?

According to the conclusion, you should never let any rule go unpunished!

But according to the evidence, it's potentially fine to let this rule go unpunished. You can't make a habit out of letting people run red lights with impunity, otherwise they'll all start doing it and chaos will result. But we weren't told of any danger associated with occasionally letting a broken rule go unpunished.

Goal

Let's look for an answer saying that the conclusion is stronger than what's warranted by the evidence. The author would be correct to say , but it's an unwarranted leap to say .

22.

The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

  1. takes for granted that a

    Not Assumed / Illegal Negation

    The author presented a conditional chain that told us, if explicit rules then are routinely → chaos results violated with impunity This answer accuses the author of assuming that if explicit rules then are not routinely → chaos will not result violated with impunity That's just an illegal negation of what the author actually said. If I say, "Smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer. So if you don't want cancer, don't smoke cigarettes", I'm not assuming that "as long as you don't smoke cigarettes, you'll never get cancer".

    23% picked this

  2. fails to consider that the

    Not an Objection to the Reasoning

    Would it hurt the argument to say, "Yo, author --- some rules that get violated are stupid rules that are made to prevent imaginary problems?" Almost. We could say, "A society can sometimes allow one of its explicit rules to go unpunished, because some rules are stupid (they were made to prevent imaginary problems)." However, this is just an objection to the conclusion. It's not an objection to the reasoning. It isn't commenting on how the author's move from her evidence to her conclusion is flawed. Furthermore, the author would just respond, "It doesn't matter whether a rule is a legit one or a stupid one. If violations of any explicit rule go routinely unpunished, then we lose moral guidance, and chaos results."

    7% picked this

  3. infers, from the claim that

    Bad Conclusion Match

    When an answer is structured like, "infers, from the claim that X, that Y", then X needs to match the evidence and Y needs to match the conclusion (or the assumption that got the author to the conclusion). Was the conclusion saying, "Violating any rule will lead to chaos"? No, not even close. The conclusion said, "Society shouldn't let any of its rules be broken with impunity". That's enough to disqualify this answer, but we could also ask whether the evidence said, "Violating some particular rules will lead to chaos". The evidence did not say that. It said "routine nonpunishment of any rule will lead to chaos". It's the lack of punishment that leads to chaos, not the violation of the rule.

    14% picked this

  4. Correct

    confuses the routine nonpunishment of

    Why this is right

    This speaks to the gap between the valid conclusion and the one the author actually made. The valid conclusion was, "(assuming a society wants to avoid chaos), a society ought to never allow any of its explicit rules to routinely be broken with impunity". The actual conclusion said that rules should never be broken with impunity. This answer is pointing out that it's potentially fine if rules are sometimes not punished. The problem outlined by the author's evidence related to what happens when rules are routinely unpunished. When we see answers like confuses X with Y, we want to see that one of those ideas (usually the first one) matches what the evidence was talking about, whereas the other one matches what the conclusion was talking about. The evidence was talking about whether or not a violation is routinely unpunished. The conclusion is talking about whether or not a violation should ever be unpunished.

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

    46% picked this

  5. takes for granted that all

    Too Strong: all / equally

    The argument doesn't discuss any consequences of breaking a rule. It only discusses consequences of routinely letting rule-breakers go unpunished. Even if the argument had discussed the consequences of breaking a rule, it would be highly unlikely that any author would commit themselves to the extreme position that "every single rule results in identically serious consequences when broken! whether you break a rule about jaywalking or a rule about murder, the consequences are equally serious!"

    10% picked this

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