Logical Reasoning

PT136 · S2 · Q20 Daniel: There are certain actions

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Daniel: There are certain actions that moral duty obliges us to perform regardless of their consequences.

Daniel's 1st Claim

Sometimes, moral duty obliges us to perform certain actions regardless of their consequences.

Does Carrie imply that there are never times when moral duty requires us to do something, regardless of consequence? No.

Daniel's 2nd Claim

Just because an action fulfills a moral obligation doesn't establish that an action is morally good.

Does Carrie imply that fulfilling a moral obligation does establish that an action is morally good? Yes! She says the only thing that can be required for a morally good action is that it fulfills a moral obligation. If that's the only criterion to satisfy, then satisfying that criterion is sufficient to to establish that an action is morally good.

Daniel's 3rd Claim

If an action isn't performed with the right motivations, it can't be morally good.

Does Carrie imply that an action performed without the right motivations can be morally good?

Yes! She stresses that motivations aren't even under our conscious control, and thus the only thing that can be required for a morally good action is that it fulfills a moral obligation. If that's the only criterion to satisfy, then satisfying that criterion is sufficient to to establish that an action is morally good. Hence, someone who fulfilled a moral obligation, even with not-right motivations, would still have committed a morally good action.

Goal

Carrie pushed back against both of Daniel's last two claims, so we have two possibilities for the correct answer - whether or not fulfilling a moral obligation is enough to call an action morally good - whether you ALSO need the right motivations for an action to be morally good

20.

The dialogue most supports the claim that Daniel and Carrie are committed to disagreeing with each other about the truth of which one of the following statements?

No one can be morally
Trap
No Comment From Either Out of Scope: possible / impossible Neither person takes up the issue of whether you can be morally required to do something impossible.
1% picked this
Some actions that are performed
No Comment From Either
Daniel is saying in his 3rd sentence that some actions that are performed without the right motivations are not morally good. We don't actually know his stance on whether actions performed with the right motivations are or aren't guaranteed to be morally good. That's enough to eliminate the answer, but we also don't know Carrie's position on this. She thinks that all that matters to morally good is fulfilling a moral obligation. We don't know whether she would agree or disagree that sometimes people have the right motivation but don't fulfill a moral obligation (i.e. didn't perform a morally good action).
12% picked this
All actions that fulfill moral
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: performed in order to fulfill Both Would Disagree Neither person uses the language of "intent". We do talk about "the right motivations" (motivation is synonym for intent), but we don't spell out what type of intent is "the right intent". If we assumed that Daniel was thinking "right motivations = fulfilling moral obligation because you want to fulfill the moral obligation", then both people would probably disagree with this claim. Since each person is speaking around the issue of whether or not people had "the right motivations" when they performed their potentially morally good action, it seems like both persons are allowing for the possibility that sometimes you're fulfilling a moral obligation accidentally or for selfish, not moral, reasons.
7% picked this
Correct
An action performed with the
Why this is right
Daniel agrees; he says an action can't be morally good unless it's performed with the right intentions. not right intentions → not morally good morally good → right intentions (morally good -r-e-q-u-i-r-e-s-> right intent) Carrie disagrees; she says that the only requirement for a morally good action is that it fulfills the moral obligation. So she thinks that an action that fulfills a moral obligation, even if it's done with the wrong motivations, could still be morally good.
Skill tested: Agree/Disagree · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
70% picked this
If a person's motivations for
Too Strong for Either
This conditional is something we couldn't infer from either person: motivations based on duty → morally good Carrie's rule is fulfills moral obligation → morally good There might be a lot of overlap between fulfilling a moral obligation and being motivated by a sense of duty (that could be a sense of duty to your moral obligation). But there could be times where you're motivated by acting on a sense of duty even though you're not fulfilling a moral obligation. So Carrie would probably disagree with this. But we certainly can't derive from Daniel's thoughts that he agrees with this. He doesn't give any way of proving that something IS morally good.
10% picked this

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