Logical Reasoning

PT123 · S3 · Q24 Sociologist: Romantics who claim

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Sociologist: Romantics who claim that people are not born evil but may be made evil by the imperfect institutions that they form cannot be right, for they misunderstand the causal relationship between people and their institutions.

Conclusion

People are not made evil by the imperfect institutions that they form.

Intermediate Conclusion (for)

Romantics misunderstand the causal relationship between people and their institutions.

(Romantics think that institutions cause people to be evil, so if the author thinks they misunderstand the causal relationship, at a minimum she is saying "institutions do NOT cause people to be evil", which is essentially a reiteration of the main conclusion. She might also be insinuating that in reality EVIL PEOPLE cause an institution to be bad, but we don't need to go that far, since her premise isn't directed towards proving that sort of idea.)

Premise (after all)

Institutions are merely collections of people.

Evaluate

The main and intermediate conclusions are essentially the same claim: institutions don't cause people to be evil.

And this is based on the claim that institutions are just collections of people.

Goal

If we're prephrasing a typical "if evidence, then conclusion" principle, we want something like,

24.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, would most help to justify the sociologist's argument?

  1. People acting together in institutions

    Irrelevant Comparison

    Whether institutions or individuals can create more good or evil in the world is not relevant to assessing whether institutions can make the people inside of them evil. The conclusion is specifically about whether institutions can cause their members to be evil, and this is a generic sense of whether they can "do good or evil" in the world.

    6% picked this

  2. Institutions formed by people are

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This doesn't have any anti-causal language, so it won't help us prove the anti-causal conclusion that "institutions don't make their members evil". If anything, stressing that institutions are always flawed would go against that goal.

    14% picked this

  3. People should not be overly

    Thin Ice

    This has some slight innuendo that human beings are born evil (don't have so much faith in them!), which would help us argue that institutions didn't make them that way. But this doesn't get anywhere close to actually saying humans are born evil. We'd be stretching it way too far.

    5% picked this

  4. A society’s institutions are the

    Bad Conclusion Match

    Gauging / measuring a society’s values is not the same as establishing the source of those values. This doesn't have any causal / anti-causal language in it, so it doesn't help us establish the anti-causal conclusion that institutions don't make their members evil.

    13% picked this

  5. Correct

    The whole does not determine

    Why this is right

    This helps us make the anti-causal move of, "If something is just a collection of people, then it can't make those people evil". After all, even if the institution were evil, the WHOLE (the institution) does not determine the properties (the evilness) of the things that compose it (the people who belong to that institution).

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

    62% picked this

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