Logical Reasoning

PT6 · S2 · Q9 Mary Ann: Our country should

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Mary Ann: Our country should, above all, be strong.

Conclusion (should)

We should judge a country by the morality of its actions, not by its strength.

Evidence

Strength has often been used for atrocities (immoral actions).

If a country's actions are morally good, the country is admirable.

Evaluate

If we accept Inez's premise that , then it sounds like judging by morality is A way to judge a country.

If we were trying to fight her conclusion, maybe we could say,

This rule also doesn't give us a way to conclude we shouldn't admire a country, so we could complain that this is only a way to judge that we should admire a country, and maybe we need some other metric to judge whether we shouldn't.

Goal

Look for anything being assumed by her method of judging countries, or look for an answer ruling out a potential alternate way to judge countries.

9.

Which one of the following is a presupposition that underlies Inez’ argument?

  1. At least one country is

    Irrelevant Quality

    Even though this seems like an appealingly weak claim, the negation doesn't hurt the argument. If we say, "Hey, Inez, NO country is admirable", we're not objecting to her argument. Her argument is just about how we should judge a country, but it's compatible with her argument if we judge all of them as non-admirable.

    2% picked this

  2. Countries cannot be both strong

    Too Strong: cannot

    Inez doesn't need these two things to be totally mutually exclusive. It doesn't hurt her argument if it's possible to be both strong and moral. She is saying that it's better to judge a country by its morality than its strength, but that claim allows for morality and strength to sometimes overlap.

    15% picked this

  3. Correct

    It is possible to assign

    Why this is right

    This must be assumed for Inez's recommendation to be feasible. If it's impossible to assign moral weight to a country's actions, then there would be no way to judge a country by its morality.

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

    81% picked this

  4. The citizens of any country

    Too Strong: any / whatever

    This is an insanely strong claim. She just said let's judge countries by morality, since strength can often be paired with terrible actions. She's nowhere close to committing herself to this indefensible claim that in every single country, every single citizen believes that every single thing their country does is good.

    0% picked this

  5. Countries should impose their standards

    Out of Scope: impose standards

    Her argument is only about how to judge a country. This is about what countries should do. She never addresses anything in that realm.

    2% picked this

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