Logical Reasoning

PT123 · S2 · Q23 Philosopher: An action is morally right if

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Philosopher: An action is morally right if it would be reasonably expected to increase the aggregate well-being of the people affected by it.

Conclusion (thus)

Actions that you'd expect will not affect the overall well-being of the people are right.

Evidence

if = sufficient If you'd expect an action to increase the overall well-being of the people, that action is right.

if and only if = bi-conditional Any action you'd expect to decrease well-being is wrong. And other type of action is not wrong.

Evaluate

We're trying to prove that a certain category of actions is "right". We'll need a proving-mechanism, a rule structured like "If xyz, then right".

The first sentence says .

However, we can't use this rule. We're trying to prove that actions expected to have no effect on well-being are right.

This rule only helps you prove that actions that increase well-being are right.

Okay, how about the fugly bi-conditional rule? Since it's a bi-conditional, it really gives us two rules. One rule is useless to us, because it proves that an action is wrong.

Also, that rule only applies to actions expected to decrease well-being. We need a rule we can apply to the subject of our conclusion: actions expected to not affect well-being.

The second rule from the bi-conditional says

Okay, well that trigger would apply to our type of action! Our actions are ones that don't affect well-being. If they don't affect well being, then they definitely don't decrease well-being.

We can apply this rule to our type of action and derive that, .

Goal

Since we're trying to prove that these types of actions are right, we need to get from "not wrong" to "right".

We want an answer to convince us that "if an action isn't wrong, then it's right".

23.

The philosopher's conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed?

  1. Only wrong actions would be

    Unrelated to Goal

    We need to be convinced that if something "isn't wrong" then it's "right". This doesn't have any power to do such a thing. This actually reiterates part of what we get from the bi-conditional rule. if it decreases well being, then wrong.

    15% picked this

  2. No action is both right

    No Impact

    We need to know that if an action "isn't wrong" then it's "right". In other words, we want to know that every action is either right or wrong. This answer tells us that no actions are BOTH right and wrong. But it still leaves open the possibility that some actions are neither right nor wrong. There might be three types of actions: right, wrong, neutral The actions our conclusion cares about are actions that don't affect well-being. We know from one of the conditional premises that such actions are "not wrong". But this answer leaves open the possibility that such actions could be Right or just Neutral. So we haven't proven the conclusion. We haven't proven that such actions are Right.

    7% picked this

  3. Correct

    Any action that is not

    Why this is right

    We were looking for "If it isn't wrong, then it's right", and that's exactly what this is giving us. Since actions that don't affect well-being don't decrease well-being, we know (from the premises) that they are not morally wrong. Now, according to this answer, we know that if they are not morally wrong, then they are morally right. So we've proven that actions that don't affect well-being are morally right.

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

    63% picked this

  4. There are actions that would

    Too Weak

    This is necessary for the argument to be valid, but is not sufficient to guarantee that such actions are morally right. This is telling us that "actions that don't affect well-being" do in fact exist. We know from the premises that such actions aren't morally wrong. But we need to be able to prove that they are morally right, and this answer has no power to prove that something is morally right.

    13% picked this

  5. Only right actions have good

    Bad Evidence/Trigger Match

    This provides a conditional that allows us to prove that an action is "right", which is our whole goal! (Only this and choice (C) have that essential feature) The rule is "if an action has good consequences, then it's right" Okay, did the evidence establish that "actions that don't affect well-being have good consequences"? No, it didn't. In fact, it's almost a self-contradiction. If it doesn't affect well-being, then how could it have good consequences. Since the actions we're dealing with in the conclusion don't trigger this conditional, it's useless to us.

    2% picked this

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