Logical Reasoning

PT129 · S3 · Q19 Essayist: One of the drawbacks

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Essayist: One of the drawbacks of extreme personal and political freedom is that free choices are often made for the worst.

Conclusion

One should not support systems that allow extreme freedom.

Evidence

People often make unwise decisions with extreme freedom, and once they see the destructive consequences, they may prefer to go for a totalitarian regime with almost no freedom.

Evaluation

Any time you have an argument that's structured like, "Don't do X, or else Y will happen", it's missing the assumption that "We don't want Y to happen". In more formal prose,

This argument is saying,

Goal

So we should be looking for something like, .

19.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the essayist's reasoning?

  1. One should not support any

    Bad Premise Match

    Is "extreme freedom" a political system that will inevitably lead to establishing a totalitarian regime? No, it's just a system that may incline people to prefer a totalitarian regime. Since systems with "extreme freedom" don't trigger this rule, this rule isn't helping us to justify the conclusion.

    6% picked this

  2. One should not expect everyone

    Bad Conclusion Match

    We need a principle that tells us what type of political system we should / shouldn't support. This principle is about whether we should / shouldn't expect everyone to thrive. That language is nowhere close to the conclusion's, so this is not useful.

    4% picked this

  3. One should support only those

    Bad Premise Match

    This rule says, "if system doesn't give freedom to make wise choices, don't support it". Is "extreme freedom" a political system that does not give people the freedom to make wise choices? No, it gives them the freedom. The author says that free choices are often made for the worst, but extreme freedom allows people to make wise / unwise choices.

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    One should not support any

    Why this is right

    This says, "if a system's destructive consequences could lead people to prefer totalitarian political regimes, then we should not support it." And we know that systems with extreme freedom have destructive consequences that lead people to possibly prefer totalitarian regimes. The premise triggers this rule, and the rule gets us to our conclusion language of "should not support".

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

    74% picked this

  5. One should not support any

    Weak Premise Match

    This says, "if a system is based on unrealistic expectations about people's behavior under that system, then we shouldn't support it." Were we told that systems with extreme freedom are based on unrealistic expectations about people's behavior? No, not quite. We weren't told that the system is based on unrealistic expectations. Our author was just saying, we should expect people to make some unwise choices in such a system. To expect otherwise would be unrealistic (he doesn't claim that anyone is expecting otherwise and certainly doesn't say that the system is based on the expectation of otherwise).

    12% picked this

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