Q7 - Since empathy is essential

[Celeste757]

hello,
don't get this one. i could narrow it down to a, b, and c, but was confused from there. help please??

[giladedelman]

Thanks for posting!

I think this is an example of a question where it's pretty easy -- and useful -- to predict the answer. The clue is that we get nothing but conditional statements:

empathy is essential for people to ignore their own welfare to help others,
therefore,
civil society couldn't exist without empathy

So we know you need empathy for people to be willing to sacrifice, and the argument concludes that you must need empathy for civil society. Huh? It must be assuming that society depends on people willing to make these sacrifices. So we're looking for an assumption that expresses that idea.

(A) is exactly what we're looking for. It says civil society requires some people to at least sometimes ignore their welfare to help others. And we know that for that to be possible, you need empathy. So we have to assume this in order to get to the conclusion that empathy is necessary for civil society.

(B) is incorrect because this has absolutely no connection to whether civil society can exist without empathy.

(C) is tempting, but first of all, we need to conclude that empathy is necessary for civil society, not that it guarantees civil society. Second, where does the argument talk about everyone in a society ignoring his or her own welfare? It doesn't. So that part is too extreme.

(D) is fine and dandy but it doesn't tell us that these codes are necessary.

(E) is just a premise booster; we already know empathy is required for this.

Does that clear this one up for you?

[irenaj]

Hello giladedelman, I am still confused by A and C. I diagram the stimulus as follows:

premise: mc(--> sometimes ignore welfare or "siw")--> ep
conclusion: cs--> ep

prephrase: connect mc(siw) and cs

I think the flow would go from premise to conclusion, therefore I prephrase the answer as: mc(siw)--> cs, therefore I chose A. However the correct answer C is quite the opposite:
cs--> mc.

This flow overthrew the flow I used to apply on assumption question with conditional reasoning, very striking to me. I compare it to preptest 38 S4 Q22

premise: sugar--> rid amino leaving trytophan-->serotonin
conclusion: sugar--> mood elevation

so in the correct answer, the flow goes like this (from premise to conclusion):

serotonin--> mood elevation

Could you analyze WHY the flow of the 2 questions above goes opposite? Is there major things I have missed in quesitons alike?

Thanks in advance!

[chike_eze]

I think it helps to simplify this one.

Empathy essential for moral codes that sometimes require them to ignore own welfare. Therefore,
Civilized society not exist without empathy

Moral code bla-bla -> Empathy
therefore,
Civilized society -> Empathy

Assumption: Civilized Society -> [Moral code bla-bla] -> Empathy

(A) Expresses this association
(C) Reverse + "everyone"?

[noah]

Gilad's busy kicking butt with some students now, so let me answer this.

Throw away the idea of the answer being premise to conclusion or vice versa. It depends on the question.

If the conclusion of an argument is X --> Y, and you're given some relationships as premises, then "spread out" the conclusion (X --> ............................. ---> Y) and see how things fit in, and where the missing link is.

In the sugar one, from what you wrote, I think it looks like this:

Sugar --> rid amino --> serotonin.....--> mood elevation

And so the missing part is serotonin --> mood elevation

However, in this argument, the chain looks like this:

cs --> .... mc --> ep

And so we're looking for cs --> mc.

That's a rather formal approach, which is good to know, but i you should also understand the thinking behind it. In this problem,if you know that moral codes lead to civilized society, and that moral codes require empathy, you still wouldn't know the relationship between civil society and empathy. According to that thinking, perhaps there are civil societies that don't require moral codes, and we have no idea how those immoral civil societies relate to empathy.

I hope that helps.

[velvet]

What is the correct way to negate answer choice D?

Is it:
"Moral codes...have [not] arisen within some civilized societies"
or
"Moral codes...have arisen within [no] civilized societies"?

The first negation doesn't destroy argument so I'm assuming is correct way to negate. Is the second negation wrong because I am negating a dependent clause and not the main linking verb?

Thanks in advance.

[noah]

What is the correct way to negate answer choice D?

Is it:
"Moral codes...have [not] arisen within some civilized societies"
or
"Moral codes...have arisen within [no] civilized societies"?

The first negation doesn't destroy argument so I'm assuming is correct way to negate. Is the second negation wrong because I am negating a dependent clause and not the main linking verb?

The second way is correct. When there's a quantifier attached to the main verb (some, most, any, etc.), negate that. If there isn't, negate the main verb.

It might seem like the second one destroys the argument, but the fact that no moral codes that.. require (blah, blah)..have arisen within any civilized societies could mean that there's been no civilized societies yet. It doesn't relate to whether the moral code is required or not. It can be hard to swallow this, because we assume that civilized societies have existed. But, who is to say that the author of the argument thinks that?

Furthermore (and this is more annoying, but probably less brain-bending), the moral code needs to require that people are sometimes altruistic. (D) says that the moral code includes the requirement, without reference to sometimes--that's stronger than we need. Notice how (A) deftly preserves the reference to "sometimes."

I hope that helps.

[sumukh09]

Is answer choice A sufficient and necessary?

[noah]

Is answer choice A sufficient and necessary?

Good question.

Let me play teacher for a moment. Do you see anything in the answer that is different than in the stimulus? Any missing parts?

Highlight below for answer once you've thought about the above:

I started typing yes, (A) is also sufficient, but on second glance, I think the fact that it doesn't refer to moral codes might render it only necessary. For a sufficient answer, we'd probably want something more like "Civilized society can exist only if there are people willing to follow moral codes that sometimes require them to ignore their own welfare to help others."

[sumukh09]

Thanks, and that highlighting trick is a pretty cool virtual pedagogical technique haha

[jewels0602]

Gilad's busy kicking butt with some students now, so let me answer this.

Throw away the idea of the answer being premise to conclusion or vice versa. It depends on the question.

If the conclusion of an argument is X --> Y, and you're given some relationships as premises, then "spread out" the conclusion (X --> ............................. ---> Y) and see how things fit in, and where the missing link is.

In the sugar one, from what you wrote, I think it looks like this:

Sugar --> rid amino --> serotonin.....--> mood elevation

And so the missing part is serotonin --> mood elevation

However, in this argument, the chain looks like this:

cs --> .... mc --> ep

And so we're looking for cs --> mc.

That's a rather formal approach, which is good to know, but i you should also understand the thinking behind it. In this problem,if you know that moral codes lead to civilized society, and that moral codes require empathy, you still wouldn't know the relationship between civil society and empathy. According to that thinking, perhaps there are civil societies that don't require moral codes, and we have no idea how those immoral civil societies relate to empathy.

I hope that helps.

This part makes me think sufficient. I think I've come across a handful of necessary questions that seem sufficient-y in the sense that the correct answer choice fills in a gap so that the premise and conclusion are at the very least a little bit related (another question like this is one about consciousness and intelligence and how one can't say animals have consciousness even if they're shown to have intelligence).

SO I guess my overall question is, with questions like this where the premise and conclusion are not shown to be connected but the overall argument REALLY is leaning towards an argument, we pick a safe answer choice that make explicit that assumption that will make the argument work?

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm not sure if I fully understood your question.

Within assumption family questions, we're evaluating two different things:
- Logic Math (missing links)
- Potential Objections (debating the truth of the conclusion or trustworthiness of evidence)

Correct answers to either type of Assumption questions will
- PROVIDE a missing link
or
- RULE OUT a potential objection

Sufficient Assumption questions are 97% PROVIDE link and 3% RULE OUT objection.

Necessary Assumption is closer to 50/50.

So I think you might just be saying that when you see a Necessary Assumption question that contains conditional words, such as "essential" and "could not exist without", and requires us to find the one missing link, it feels more like Sufficient Assumption (since almost all Sufficient Assumption questions contain conditional logic and reward the missing link).

Let me pick apart why I don't understand your question.
"SO I guess my overall question is, with questions like this where the premise and conclusion are not shown to be connected ..."

That is true for all Assumption family questions. The conclusion is never proven by the premises. I think what you're really referring to conclusions that have some NEW GUY like "civilized society". Where did THAT concept come from? We didn't talk about that in the Premises!

When you see a NEW GUY in the conclusion, he's usually being connected to some FAMILIAR GUY that we DID talk about in the premises.

Here, the FAMILIAR GUY in the conclusion is "empathy".

The task for these types of arguments is usually to connect what we learned about the FAMILIAR GUY in the premise (empathy = essential for people to be altruistic) to what we're saying about the NEW GUY in the conclusion.

Basically, replace the FAMILIAR GUY in the conclusion with what you told about him in the premise.

That should sound link the missing link.

Original conclusion:
"Civilized society requires empathy"

Swapping out FAMILIAR GUY with what we were told about him in the premise:
"Civilized society requires [people be willing to follow moral codes that sometimes require them to ignore their own welfare to help others]"

This looks a lot like (A), right?

Continuing your question:
"... but the overall argument REALLY is leaning towards an argument, ..."

I don't know what you mean by leaning towards an argument. These are always arguments. I think you just mean you kinda FEEL what concepts the author must have been intending to associate with one another.

"... we pick a safe answer choice that make explicit that assumption that will make the argument work?"

Careful there
- 'pick a safe answer choice that make explicit that assumption' = Necessary Assumption

- 'pick an assumption that will make the argument work' = Sufficient Assumption

Sufficient Assumption = if true, proves argument
Necessary Assumption = if false, ruins argument

[ahm]

Quick question:

Is B wrong because it confuses Empathy, which is necessary, for sufficient?

[hnadgauda]

Necessary & sufficient questions with conditionals always slow me down! The below is how I approached this problem on my second try.

People willing to follow moral code --> Empathy
People ignore welfare to help others --> Empathy
Conclusion: Civilized society exists --> Empathy

Gap: All the above require empathy. In questions like these, I know we are supposed to connect the premises together. So I will look for that in the answer choices.

A: This has People ignore welfare to help others and civilized society exists. This would link the statements!
B: Detrimental to civilized society is out of scope.
C: Also tempting. I ultimately eliminated this by negating it to "If not everyone in a society is willing to ignore his/her welfare, then society will still be civilized." This doesn't destroy our argument because maybe some people will be willing to ignore their welfare. Then society will still be civilized.
D: This is a negation of the second premise. Wrong.

Do you have suggestions for how to tackle these problems faster? Without diagramming? My problem is I don't want to diagram because I'm anxious that it's eating up my time.

[JeremyK460]

Breakdown:
People can follow moral codes (that sometimes requires them to ignore their own shit to help others), only if they have empathy.

Civilized society can exist only if there’s empathy.

Diagram:
F only if E
C only if E

C only if F

Analysis:
A civilized society can exist only if people are willing to follow moral codes.

Answer Choices:
(A) This matches the copula ‘only if’ which can be logically drawn by way of implicature through ‘not-X without Y’ construction. The arrangement of terms in the proper logical structure; both sufficient and necessary for the logic.

(B) This answer talks about something that could happen in the future while the argument is about a past / non-finite time period.

The frequency modifier ‘usually’ isn’t completely exhaustive when negated. Given the exclusive nature of the conclusion, the right answer would have to match that. Its scalar implication takes on a particular probability enumeration ‘X likely leads to Y’. This likelihood is too weak to be necessary for an argument whose terms are exceptive/exclusive.

This relationship isn’t guaranteed like the terms are; its outcome is probable.

(C) If everyone? This feels a little more explicitly universal than the indeterminate quantity of the subject class in the argument. The argument doesn’t distribute its subject class while this answer does.
The argument talks about a society being able to be civilized while the answer talks about a necessary eventuality.

(D) This would strengthen the idea that a civilized society through following moral codes actually worked at one point. I don’t know if it did or not. It sounds like two guys smoking weed and talking in hypotheticals, applying make believe rules.

(E) These terms are not related in this order, but I think this does nothing; strengthen if anything.