Q16 - Chiu: The belief that

[chike_eze]

Picked the correct answer (B) during Timed PT, but picked wrong answer (E) during review. Not exactly sure how this happened

Okay, let's see if I can get this right.

People are not always morally blameworthy for emotions XYZ, because people are only responsible for emotions they have control over.

People do not always have control over emotions XYZ, therefore (by inference) people are not always responsible for emotions XYZ.

Gap: "not responsible" does not mean "not morally blameworthy". We need to connect the two terms!

Not Responsible -> Not morally blameworthy

(B) = morally blameworthy -> Responsible (contrapositive)

[timmydoeslsat]

Beautiful. You jumped on the fact that morally blameworthy is in the conclusion and not in the premises. It must be connected. Good work.

[Michelle5]

ah! for some reason I am not getting it. would someone mind writing out the symbolic logic? i appreciate it tremendously!

[Michelle5]

ah! for some reason I am not getting it. would someone mind writing out the symbolic logic? i appreciate it tremendously!

[eunjung.shin]

ah! for some reason I am not getting it. would someone mind writing out the symbolic logic? i appreciate it tremendously!

Let me try.

This is a sufficient assumption question, so you have to find an answer that will make the conclusion valid.

Premise: ind are responsible for only what is under their control, and whether one feels emotions such as xyz is not always under one's control.

Con: a person is not always morally blameworthy for feeling emotions like xyz.

The conclusions says the person is feeling emotions and you know from the premise that she/he is not responsible for feeling such emtions. Now You connect that with the new concept in the con which is "not morally blameworthy".

Therefore,
- responsible-> - m. Blameworthy
You contrapose that conditional and will get the answer B.

[joseph.m.kirby]

I'll take a shot at diagramming this problem.

For this problem, I first identified the core. The conclusion is the first sentence and then two premises follow. Next, try to abstract the structure and relationships:

P1: emotion --> ~always under control
P2: responsible --> always under control
---------
C: emotion --> ~always morally blameworthy

From the relationships, we see that we can connect the two premises by taking the contrapositive of P2 and plugging it into P1.

P2 contrapositive: (~always under control --> ~responsible)

Plug it in: emotion --> ~always under control --> ~responsible
deduction: emotion --> ~responsible

Given the above work, try to locate a gap in the logic among the premises and conclusion.

Gap: ~responsible --> ~always morally blameworthy

From the premises we know that if one feels an emotion (UA,J,R), one is not responsible. However, there's no connection between not being responsible and not always being morally blameworthy. Thus, we need to connect these ideas (and be wary of the contrapositive).

Scan the answer choices:

Contrapositive
(B): If a person is morally blameworthy for something, then that person is responsible for it.

I hope this helps.