Q17 - The position that punishment should be proportional

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Determine the Function

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: It is an unsustainable position to argue that "punishment should be proportional to the offense, but also repeat offenders should get harsher penalties".
Evidence: Previous offenses are remote considerations, and if you start roping in remote considerations then you'll make it near impossible to apply the proportionality principle, which only cares about THIS offense.

Answer Anticipation:
The stem is asking about the role of the 2nd sentence. We should always get a blunt prephrase that at least gets at whether a claim played the role of MAIN CONC, SUPPORT, OPPOSING, or NEUTRAL.

The 2nd sentence is definitely part of the support. If we wanted to get more nuanced, we can say "it's an implication of the position stated in the first sentence" whose further implications the author takes to be a logical absurdity.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This sounds like an Intermediate Conclusion. Is our claim something the author provided grounds to accept? No.

(B) The first half is great, the second half is opposite.

(C) Not the overall conclusion, which is the 1st sentence.

(D) Yes. "It is a consequence of a view rejected in the argument's main conclusion" is easy to match.

The main conclusion says that "The position … is unsustainable".
The 2nd sentence says that "The position IMPLIES [our claim]."
So our claim is an implication/consequence of the view/position that's being rejected in the main conclusion.

Can we say that it's an allegedly untenable consequence?
Yes, because we're saying
"The original position implies [our claim]. If [our claim] is true, then something else would be true that would make the original position impossible to hold."

(E) No, we can't find an intermediate conclusion anywhere in this argument. When they provide and test intermediate conclusions, they provide either SUPPORT or CONCLUSION indicator words to help us clearly see the support/conclusion relationship between a premise and an intermediate conclusion.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is a pretty tough DTF question. People will probably struggle to find the conclusion, struggle to understand the self-defeating logic the author is exposing, and struggle to like the language in (D). If we can do at least some of that right and narrow it down to a better guess, job well done. This sort of argument structure is sometimes called something like "reductio ad absurdum" (no idea what the Latin is), but it means "it reduces to absurdity". You basically follow the logical implications of something until it blows up in its face, in order to show that the original position was bad.

#officialexplanation

[DanielZ772]

Patrick, in considering option E, wouldn't you consider the language "It implies that..." to be the sort of language that signals an intermediate conclusion? I had difficulty ruling out this answer choice.

Moreover, when making a choice between D and E, I considered that the sentence in question "Considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago are relevant to the seriousness of the offense," to be less of an "allegedly untenable consequence" than the sentence immediately following, "If such remote considerations were relevant, almost every other consideration would be too." I understand that it's a pretty tight inference to get from the former sentence to the latter, but when I was considering this answer choice, I thought D described that second sentence much better than the one being tested. That is what tipped the scales for me.

[ohthatpatrick]

We would say that Premises IMPLY a conclusion.

So if the position described in the 1st sentence IMPLIES our 2nd sentence, then we would call the 2nd sentence a conclusion.

(E) calls it a premise.

===================

I see why you're saying the "IF remote considerations were relevant" feels more like the beginning of the untenable situation.

Technically, the really untenable part of the conversation is the "impossible to apply" part of the final sentence.

There's a chain of thoughts:
"IF remote = relevant --> everything's relevant --> it's impossible to apply proportionality prin."

That chain of unsavory events needs to be triggered, though, in order to occur.

The sentence they're asking us about is the FACT that
"Yes, remote are relevant", which triggers an untenable chain of consequences.

[EdZ350]

Hi Patrick,

I am still a little bit confused...I could see why D was correct but was really unable to eliminate E as an answer choice. Wouldn't the statement [considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago...] be a premise for the intermediate conclusion [but this would make determining the seriousness of an offense...] which would in turn be supporting the final conclusion in the first sentence? Am I possibly misunderstanding what an intermediate conclusion is? The way I see it, the last sentence is the intermediate conclusion which uses the statement [considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago...] as a premise/support.

Just found this question strange, since I feel like I've seen intermediate conclusions in other questions that look exactly like the last sentence.

[A B]

Hey, so I wanted to try to answer this! Hopefully I can help, but if not, hopefully Patrick will jump in. So I have two thoughts on how to help you realize this isn't a premise.

1. the therefore test
If the sentence that starts with "but" truly is an intermediary conclusion like you think, let's see if what comes before it (the sentence in question which you're calling a premise) really leads to it. So, would it make sense to say: "this implies that considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago are relevant to the seriousness of an offense, therefore, this would make determining the seriousness of an offense so difficult that it would be impossible to apply the proportionality principle." ?
To me that doesn't really sound right, and I think it's because the second sentence is just another fact, another implication, that would come from this position that the author is rejecting. I think what's particularly important is the "but" showing a shift. I don't think the sentence in question leads to the last sentence, but rather, the two together are facts that help show why this position is not unsustainable.

Let's just see if we abstracted this argument and made it really simple if it would be any easier to understand why this doesn't work:

The new proposed policy that you are not allowed to drive a car because you got an F on your road test 10 years ago is ridiculous. It implies that your driving skills are only as good today as they were 10 years ago. But this would mean that no one could ever improve.

Would you say that the sentence starting with "but" is an intermediate conclusion?
If the therefore test isn't working, I think this next one is key:

2. if it really is a premise, then if you take it away, the conclusion won't stand. So, let's look at our simple argument: If I took away "it implies that your driving skills are only as good today as they were 10 years ago." Does the next sentence (which comparably you might have called the intermediate conclusion) still stand? Yes! You don't need that sentence to be able to claim "no one could ever improve," just like you don't need : "this implies that considerations as remote as what an offender did years ago are relevant to the seriousness of an offense" to say the statement that begins with "but" in the original argument.

I think that was probably a longer explanation than you were hoping for, and maybe Patrick can help with a more concise/accurate one, but I hope this helps a bit!

[ohthatpatrick]

Great response, thanks!

It's hard for me to think how you could have a final claim, prefaced by "But", and call it an intermediate conclusion.

"But" is certainly a common way to transition into a conclusion, but when that's occurring, there would be a supporting premise that comes after.

CONSIDER THIS:
Lucy's birthday gesture to Dave is going to go over poorly. Lucy wants to make Dave something he likes, and she's making cupcakes. But Dave doesn't like cupcakes.

That last "but" idea is definitely one of the author's supporting ideas, because it's part of convincing us that the birthday gesture will go over poorly.

However, is there any support for the idea that Dave doesn't like cupcakes?
No.

If the last sentence in Q17 is a conclusion, then we should be able to point to some supporting idea.

why should we believe that Treating almost all remote considerations as relevant to determining the seriousness of an offense would make it impossible to apply the proportionality principle?

Does the author provide any reason why we should believe that last claim?
No. A reason would have sounded something like, "prosecutors and judges don't have the time needed to investigate THIS many remote considerations".