Logical Reasoning

PT137 · S3 · Q14 Human beings can live happily

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Human beings can live happily only in a society where love and friendship are the primary motives for actions.

Background

conditional (only)

Live happily → Love/friendship are primary motives for actions

Love/friendship are not → can't live happily primary motives for actions

Pivot (Yet) Economic needs can be satisfied even when love / friendship are not the primary motives for actions.

Setup

So, human beings ....

Evaluate

Usually with Logical Completion (i.e. fill in the blank) questions, it's pretty doable to predict where the fill in the blank is going, because we'll have two different strands of thought that we are going to try to safely bring together.

In this case, it's a little weird. The Pivot word suggests that we should be trying to figure out how to reconcile the 1st and 2nd sentence. It sounds like Happiness and Economic Needs are two different things.

Happiness requires love and friendship being the primary motives for action whereas economic needs can be satisfied even if economic utility is all that motivates action.

Goal

Most wrong answers on Logical Completion are too strongly worded. So, given that we don't have much of a prediction, let's just look for something safely worded that balances the differing needs of "living happily" and "satisfying economic needs".

14.

Which one of the following most logically completes the argument?

  1. can live happily only when

    Too Strong: only when

    We know that humans can live happily only when love and friendship are the primary motives for action. In order to support this answer, we would have to know that "love and friendship are the primary motives for action only when economic utility isn't a motivator at all". That's way too strong. We need love and friendship to be the primary motives, not the only motives. It's possible for economic utility to be a secondary motive, which still permits living happily.

    5% picked this

  2. cannot achieve happiness unless their

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: cannot unless Opposite, if anything Beyond being way stronger than anything we could justify, this answer also makes it seem like the requirements of happiness and economic needs are intertwined, but this paragraph made them sound distinct.

    5% picked this

  3. cannot satisfy economic needs by

    Too Strong: cannot

    Why can't interactions with family members / friends potentially satisfy economic needs? Were we told about anything that's required to satisfy economic needs? No, we weren't. All we can say about satisfying economic needs is that you don't need to have love and friendship be the primary motives for actions. It's fine if they are the primary motives; but you don't need them to be.

    3% picked this

  4. Correct

    can satisfy their basic economic

    Why this is right

    It's the only safely worded answer up here, so that makes it a lot easier to find this correct answer. Is it possible to satisfy basic economic needs without obtaining happiness? Sure! The first sentence that said happiness requires X, and the second sentence said "economic needs can be satisfied even in the absence of this condition". So you can satisfy basic economic needs, even when X is not true, which means that you can satisfy basic economic needs even when you wouldn't be able to obtain happiness.

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

    86% picked this

  5. cannot really be said to

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: cannot unless Opposite, if anything Beyond being way stronger than anything we could justify, this answer also makes it seem like the requirements of happiness and economic needs are intertwined, but this paragraph made them sound distinct.

    1% picked this

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