Q15 - Medical ethicist: Assuming there is

[sokolowskiscott76]

[Deleted copyrighted material.]

I selected A but the answer was C....I can't see the logic in the train....I know it may be something simple but I'm not sure what I'm missing with this question.

[giladedelman]

Thanks for posting!

On "match the flaw" questions such as this one, it's essential to identify the flaw in the original argument before heading to the answer choices. I also find it really useful to try phrasing the flaw in my own words, in my head, before looking for a match.

So in this case, the original argument tells us that because patients with extreme symptoms are best able to weigh benefits vs. costs when it comes to experimental treatments, it's acceptable to give them such treatments. From this intermediate conclusion, it concludes that it is therefore never acceptable to give experimental treatments to people who don't suffer extreme symptoms.

Well, this is a pretty basic conditional logic flaw. Just because it's okay to give treatment to one group, does that mean it's not okay to give it to a different group? Of course not! Maybe it's acceptable for both!

In other words, just because A --> B, that doesn't mean -A --> -B. It's an illegal negation.

Okay, so we're looking for an answer choice that has a similar illegal negation.

(C) is our match. We know if you've lived in a certain country, traveled, and returned, you're "exceptionally qualified" to judge the country's merits. From this, the argument concludes that people who have not lived in the country should not form judgments. But why does that have to be true? Just because one group of people -- those who have lived there -- is qualified, that doesn't mean that if you're not in the group, you're unqualified. Maybe they're all qualified! So we've got another illegal negation.

(A) is incorrect because it doesn't have our flaw. One big red flag here is that the conclusion says, those who are less knowledgeable "should not expect to make money in every investment." That's a pretty mild statement -- it just says you can't expect to win every time. But our original argument says that experimental treatment is never acceptable for a certain group.

Anyway, this choice is saying, experts don't always win, so people with less expertise shouldn't expect to always win. For it to be a match, we would have to claim a different result for the people not in the first group. Instead we're claiming that they should also expect to sometimes fail.

(B) is easier to get rid of. We're not assigning some feature to a group and then denying that feature from a different group.

(D) is out because, again, we don't have two groups to compare.

(E) is way, way out there. X is inevitable, so it's not worthwhile to weight the costs of it. Okay?

Does that clear this one up for you?

[shirando21]

I think B's format is: A-->B, -B-->-A

that's why it does not match the logic format in the argument.

[cwolfington]

Could someone please do a more thorough diagram of the stimulus? I see the premises as: Experimental treatments->Suffer extreme symptoms->Weigh risks vs benefits
Conclusion: ~Suffer extreme symptoms->~Experimental treatments; which is a valid conclusion.

[ohthatpatrick]

It might help your understanding of the question to actually stop thinking about it in terms of diagramming.

What's wrong with this argument:

People with 2 or more kids are the most ideal candidates for buying a minivan. Therefore, if you don't have any children, you should never buy a minivan.

The conclusion sounds pretty harsh, right? How would we make a counterargument that says that it IS okay for someone without children to buy a minivan.

We might say
- everyone has a right to buy a minivan
- some single people are in bands, and all the band members could fit into a minivan
- some people need to move a lot of cargo and a minivan can hold a lot of cargo

etc.

But how would we describe the flaw?

The author is moving from the idea [people w/ kids] are the drivers MOST suited for a minivan to the idea that [people w/o kids] are NOT suited for a minivan.

We can think of it conditionally, but we don't have to.

You could easily just describe this flaw as "Just because people with [quality X] are the BEST option doesn't mean that people who don't have quality X can't also be an option."

In (C), it uses "exceptionally qualified" as a match for "best" and [quality X] would be "born and raised in some country, lived abroad, then returned".

Just because people who were born there / lived there / left there / returned there are EXCEPTIONALLY QUALIFIED to judge the merits doesn't mean that people who aren't those things can't ALSO judge the merits.

In terms of what was wrong with your diagramming, you said the premise was

Experimental treatments->Suffer extreme symptoms->Weigh risks vs benefits

So the first link is akin to saying
"If you're offered an experimental treatment, then you are certainly a patient who suffers from extreme symptoms".
or
"All patients offered exp treatments are patients w/ extreme symp"
or
"In order to be offered an experimental treatment, you MUST be a patient with extreme symptoms".

However what was given to us was
"It is acceptable to offer experimental treatments to ppl with extreme symptoms."

If I said, "It is acceptable for a woman to be President of the United States", how would you diagram that?

I'm not sure how I'd diagram that.
Could we say
IF woman, THEN acceptable to be US President
Could we say
IF acceptable to be US President, THEN woman

Clearly the 2nd one makes no sense. The first one is fine, but that means that your original conditional would be

IF suffer extreme symptoms THEN acceptable to offer exp treat

In general, if you wanted to diagram "It is A to be B" you would get
B --> A

If I say "It is wrong to lie"

Is that
lie --> wrong
or
wrong --> lie

The 1st one sounds right. Lying proves to me you did something wrong. The fact that you did something wrong doesn't prove to me you lied.

Lastly, if we were really going to go a conditional route (which again we don't need to), the first sentence has a compound sufficient trigger.

It's actually
Reas. chance for cure AND extreme sympt --> accept offer exp treat

Hope this helps.

[economienda]

Hey ohthatpatrick,

you say that the first sentence of the stimulus has a compound sufficient trigger, which you diagrammed as:

Reas. chance for cure AND extreme sympt --> accept offer exp treat

Can the last sentence of the stimulus be diagrammed as:

~extreme sympt —> ~accept offer exp treat