Logical Reasoning

PT135 · S1 · Q6 Evan: I am a vegetarian because

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Evan: I am a vegetarian because I believe it is immoral to inflict pain on animals to obtain food.

Evan's Criticism

My pescatarian friends (vegetarians who otherwise eat fish) should not be eating fish.

Evan's Premise

Even though we're not sure that sea creatures experience pleasure or pain, if we're trying to avoid inflicting pain, we should give them the benefit of the doubt (and act as though they DO feel pain, so we shouldn't murder them for our food).

Evaluate

This is like a Parallel question, but it uses the language of "illustrated Principle".

Some Parallel questions are testing formal logical structures (like ). Other Parallel questions are just testing slogan / principle type ideas:

- if it was true before, it'll be true again - if the extra effort yield little in return, don't bother - if you behaved that way in this situation, you should behave the same way in a similar situation

We need to think about what Principle Evan is implicitly using (but we can't name it using words like vegetarian / pain / seafood).

He seems to think: if you aren't sure whether or not you're hurting something, err on the side of not hurting them by not risking it.

Goal

Let's try to find an argument in which someone is saying,

6.

Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle illustrated by Evan's criticism of vegetarians who eat seafood?

  1. Correct

    I do not know if

    Why this is right

    This establishes a potential for wronging someone -- we might be stiffing Farah on the money she lent us. It establishes that we're not sure whether we're wronging someone -- Farah can't remember if she's been paid back. And it concludes that we should act on the safe side of making sure we're not wronging that someone -- let's just pay her the money, so we can be sure we're not wronging her. We can match up those structural features with the original: Establishes a potential for wronging someone -- we might be inflicting pain on sea creatures when we kill them for food Establishes that we're not sure whether we're wronging someone -- it's not known whether certain sea creatures can experience pleasure / pain Concludes that we should act on the safe side of making sure we're not wronging that someone -- let's just refrain from eating seafood.

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

    78% picked this

  2. It is uncertain whether all

    Bad Conclusion Match

    This establishes a potential for wronging someone — some people might be be driving a defective vehicle unknowingly. It establishes that we're not sure whether we're wronging someone — "it is uncertain whether they know". But it fails to conclude that we should act on the safe side of making sure we're not wronging that someone — instead of saying "so we should just try contacting all the vehicle owners again to make sure they know", it says some mismatching conclusion that is more like "so some of the vehicles the car company recalled have not been returned by the vehicle owners". That would be like if the original argument said, "Thus, we should expect that some of sea creatures we eat do / do not feel pain".

    8% picked this

  3. I am opposed to using

    Bad Premise/Conclusion Match

    It's hard to match any part of this up with the argument. The principle in this argument is something like, "Let's not do a certain action, because even if it would bring a short term gain, it will probably make us more shaky in the long run."

    8% picked this

  4. Updating our computer security system

    Bad Premise/Conclusion Match

    It's hard to match any part of this up with the argument. The principle in this argument is something like, "Let's do action X. Things are presently fine, but X might make them better, and if not, we can do things to offset the cost of X."

    4% picked this

  5. Isabel Allende lived through the

    Bad Premise/Conclusion Match

    It's hard to match any part of this up with the argument. The principle in this argument is something like, "Since a certain person's art reflects traits that are a mismatch for the artists' experiences, the artist has not been tainted by her experiences."

    2% picked this

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