Q18 - Censor: All anarchist novels have two objectionable

[katie.raitz]

This is listed incorrectly as a Strengthen question. It is actually a Principle question. Thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

Thanks.

It's actually both a Principle and a Strengthen question.

Strengthen often is worded:
Which of the following, if true, most supports the reasoning?

And this says:
Which of the following, if valid, most justifies the reasoning?

So, it's basically the same task. The word 'Principle' actually shows up in a handful of question stems, some of which are like Strengthen, some are like Necessary Assumption, some are like Match the Reasoning, and some are like Inference.

For that reason, it might be a good habit to stop thinking there is such a thing as a Principle question. When we see that word in the question stem, the word alone doesn't tell us what our task is.

To be fair, Principle-Strengthen usually feels different from a normal Strengthen question. It actually acts more like Sufficient Assumption the vast majority of the time (i.e. the correct answer is usually a conditional that connects the Premise to the Conclusion). But on recent tests, they have given us correct answers that are more of the Strengthen variety (although still worded in a broad, normative way to sound like a principle).

[katie.raitz]

Great - thanks, that makes sense to me. It is helpful to hear that "principle" can be included with a variety of question types.

How are these two examples of Necessary Assumption questions that include "principle" :

The argument requires which one of the following principles to proceed?
&
Which of the following principles does the argument rely on?

[ohthatpatrick]

Those are great! Very nicely done.

You'll see question stems sometimes say "Which of the following principles most conforms to the reasoning?"

"Conforming" to the reasoning is like Necessary Assumption in the sense that we should match what the author said without going overboard.


The Match the Reasoning one sounds like
"Which of the following most illustrates a principle illustrated by the argument above?"

The Inference one is like
"Which of the following situations best conforms to the principle above?"

(We call that one Principle-Example in most of our materials)

[mmcnary]

Is an acceptable way to go about this question to put the answer choices between the first and second sentence in the question? This is how I went about it and can see that D works but am having trouble ruling out answer choice B.

I put answer choice B into the statement below and it seems to bridge the gap for me and strengthen the conclusion. Could you show me where I'm going wrong please?

All Anarchist novels have two objectionable characteristics: a subversive outlook and a depiction of wholesale violence. (If a novel depicts wholesale violence, then it is permissible to ban it if doing so causes more harm than good). Therefore it is permissible to ban any anarchist novel that does more harm than good to society.

[ohthatpatrick]

That's VERY acceptable. It works because the first sentence is PREMISE and the second is CONCLUSION.

Any time we're doing Principle-Strengthen or Sufficient Assumption, you can test answer choices by thinking
PREMISE(s) + ANSWER CHOICE = CONCLUSION?

The key difference between (B) and (D) is

(B) = BANNING the novel would do more good than harm

(D) = THE NOVEL ITSELF would do more harm than good

Even though those sound somewhat interchangeable, they mean very different things. The effects of a ban vs. the effects of the novel.

The only time we bring up "harm vs. good" is in the conclusion, in relation to the effects of the novel.

We can't assume that "if a novel does more harm than good, then BANNING that novel does more good than harm". Banning a novel prevents the novel from committing its harm, but the act of banning (censoring) a novel might be so shocking to an open society that it still does more harm than good.

[AyakiK696]

I thought that B was wrong because of the additional conditional at the end ("if doing so would do more good than harm to society"). I didn't even catch the term shift in this answer choice. If we disregarded that term shift, would we be able to equate "that would do more harm than good" in the stimulus with "if doing so would do more harm than good" part of the answer choice? I also thought that B was wrong because it just talks about "novels that depict wholesale violence," whereas the stimulus is about anarchist novels specifically (which have that and another characteristic).