Logical Reasoning

PT140 · S1 · Q21 Lawyer: If you take something

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Lawyer: If you take something that you have good reason to think is someone else's property, that is stealing, and stealing is wrong.

Conclusion

It wasn't wrong for Meyers to take the compost in the public garden.

Evidence

If you take something you had good reason to think was someone else's property, that's stealing, that's wrong. But Meyers had no good reason to think that the compost in the public garden was anyone else's property.

Evaluate

First of all, this is pretty hilarious for once. Someone stole compost from a public garden? That's hilarious. They just double-parked, put on their hazard lights, and popped the trunk. Started shoveling compost into their trunk?

So, the author provides us with a conditional rule: Take something w/ good reason to think it belongs → Stealing → Wrong to someone else

Then the author says

That's an illegal Opposite move. Given a conditional relationship like "if you lie, then you did something wrong", we can't think to ourselves .

Even if you didn't lie, you still might have done something wrong.

Similarly, even though Meyers had no good reason to think he was taking someone else's property, he still might have done something wrong.

Goal

The fancy name for presenting a conditional logic premise and then reasoning illegally in a Backwards or Opposite fashion is confusing Necessary vs. Sufficient. Taking something you had good reason to think was someone else's is one Sufficient reason that guarantees you did something wrong, but no one said it's the only way to have done something wrong.

21.

The reasoning in the lawyer's argument is flawed in that the argument

  1. confuses a factual claim with

    Wrong Flaw

    This argument was committing a Fact vs. Opinion mistake. It does have a premise that is presented as factual (Meyers didn't have good reason) and a conclusion that sounds like a moral judgment (Meyers didn't do anything wrong). But it wasn't wrong for the author to go from fact to moral judgment, because the conditional rule she cited moves from fact to moral judgment. The logical problem was that the author didn't go from "the Trigger is true, so the Outcome is true", she went from "the Trigger is false, so the Outcome is false".

    12% picked this

  2. takes for granted that Meyers

    Not Assumed

    The author only dealt with what actually happened, so we can't accuse her of making assumptions about what might have happened in some counterfactual. Her conclusion is simply that Meyers didn't do anything wrong, not that Meyers is incapable of doing something wrong, or that Meyers can be trusted to not do anything wrong (or anything like that, more expansive, that would possibly make this counterfactual relevant).

    18% picked this

  3. Correct

    takes a condition that by

    Why this is right

    This describes the Necessary vs. Sufficient flaw. "Taking something you believe to be someone else's" is a condition that by itself is enough to make an action wrong, but it's not the only thing that can make it wrong. It would be like if we said, "Burning down a building is called arson, and arson is wrong. But Mandy didn't burn down any buildings, so she didn't do anything wrong." She might not have committed arson, but she might have done something else wrong.

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

    62% picked this

  4. fails to consider the possibility

    Not an Objection

    The author seems to explicitly consider this possibility when she mentions that the compost was from a public garden. Even if we granted that the compost was Meyers' property (maybe it's a community garden, so it's public but he still owns this compost?), this would only help the author's argument that Meyers did nothing wrong.

    2% picked this

  5. concludes that something is certainly

    Bad Premise/Conclusion Match

    Does the author conclude that something is certainly someone else's property? Nope. She concludes that Meyers did nothing wrong. We could eliminate based on this. Was the evidence a premise that there is good but not conclusive reason to think that the compost is someone else's property? Nope. The evidence was that Meyers had no good reason to think the compost was someone else's.

    6% picked this

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