Logical Reasoning

PT134 · S1 · Q23 Ethicist: Marital vows often contain

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Ethicist: Marital vows often contain the promise to love “until death do us part.” If “love” here refers to a feeling, then this promise makes no sense, for feelings are not within one’s control, and a promise to do something not within one’s control makes no sense.

Main Conclusion (thus)

No one should take "love" in the context of a marital vow to "love until death do us part" to refer to feelings.

Intermediate Conclusion

If it did refer to feelings, it would make no sense.

Evidence

Feelings aren't under our control, and promising to do something that isn't under your control makes no sense.

Evaluate

The 2nd sentence contains an airtight argument with a conclusion and two premises.

Feelings = not under control + not under control → promises about it don't make sense --------------------------------------- promises about feelings don't make sense

So we're really just analyzing the gap between the Intermediate and Main Conclusion.

IC: interpreting "love", in this marital vow context, as feelings makes no sense.

MC: you shouldn't interpret "love", in the marital vow context, to mean feelings.

Goal

We just need a connector that says or accomplishes,

The correct answer needs to have language about "how something should / shouldn't be taken", because that is New Concept in the Conclusion. We are trying to derive a claim about how something should / shouldn't be taken, so we need a rule about how things should / shouldn't be taken (and since the evidence didn't provide such a rule, the correct answer must).

23.

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

  1. None of our feelings are

    Premise Support / Unrelated to Goal

    This literally restates something from the argument (feelings are not within one's control). We need a NEW idea, that we can add onto the existing evidence, so that we can finally derive the conclusion. Since this has no language about how something should/shouldn't be taken, it's a non-starter.

    5% picked this

  2. People should not make promises

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This answer is about what things people should make promises to do, while the conclusion is about how we should take the use of a certain word within a promise.

    25% picked this

  3. “Love” can legitimately be taken

    Too Weak

    Pretty tempting, although it wouldn't resemble a normal correct answer because it doesn't interact with any of the premises. But it is talking the sort of language we need about how we should / shouldn't take the word "love". Or is it? Technically, it's talking about how you COULD take the meaning of that word in context. It's not talking about how you SHOULD take it. The author thinks we SHOULD take the word 'love', in the context of a marital vow, to mean something other than feelings. But this answer is just saying we COULD legitimately do that (and it doesn't specify whether marital vows are one of the times we could do that). Do it doesn't get us all the way to proving the conclusion.

    17% picked this

  4. Correct

    Promises should not be interpreted

    Why this is right

    We knew from the intermediate conclusion that "taking love in a marital promise to mean feelings would make no sense". According to this rule, if interpreting love in a marital promise would make no sense, then you shouldn't interpret it that way. This guarantees our conclusion. (saying "you shouldn't take it to mean X" = "you shouldn't interpret it as meaning X")

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

    49% picked this

  5. Promises that cannot be kept

    Unrelated to Goal

    We need a rule that tells us how we should / shouldn't take the meaning of a certain word in context. This is a rule about whether something can / can't make sense. We already know that taking 'love' to mean feelings can't make sense. We need to get FROM there TO the idea that "we shouldn't take 'love' to mean feelings."

    5% picked this

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