Q18

[LeonC641]

Hi. When I took the test, I struggled between (C) and (E). I could see why (E) is correct but I found (C) very attractive. Passage B is basically saying that people will still make moral judgments even when they have no free will. (C) could undermine this idea because experiment subjects, which we could safely assume to be human, actually respond randomly to a repeated stimulus. If their responses are random, how could we say those responses are in fact moral judgments? I thought a judgment needs deliberation so it can't be a random response. Could anyone share your insights? Thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

Since they're asking us to weaken the ARGUMENT made in passage B, we need to think like we do in LR and ask, "What's the CONC? What's the EVIDENCE?"

Were you saying the main conc of the passage was this?
Passage B is basically saying that people will still make moral judgments even when they have no free will.

The passage begins by saying something close to that ...
we can accept that people don't have free will, yet we still want to blame them when they misbehave.

You can only blame someone for something they could have prevented, but if we have no free will then we can't prevent anything.

This is the backdrop for the author's main point, but her main point seems to be crystallizing as a sense of "GIVEN that we have this irrational emotional need to blame people wrongdoing, even if we accept that they have no free will .... WHAT SHOULD WE DO?"

Her main takeaway seems to be that final paragraph beginning with "My sense is that ..."

CONC: the criminal justice system will somehow need to balance the brain science version of the world in which we don't have free will with this nagging moral emotion we have about blaming the wrongdoer.

EVID: Blaming is just to intrinsically a part of being human for us to get rid of it.

I would look for an answer that goes against something in that last paragraph, where the author makes her argument.

(A) not sure what this would go against. the last paragraph isn't saying that drugs can't help people with brain disorders.

(B) this doesn't seem to go against anything. the last paragraph isn't saying that the two brain hemispheres are always connected.

(C) the last paragraph isn't saying that anything about random / purposeful. There's a distinction between free will / no free will. But whether an action is free or not has nothing to do with whether it's random or purposeful. Both types of actions come in both flavors.

(D) This is very weakly worded, so not initially enticing. The author doesn't think we could get rid of blame; it's too fundamental to human existence. In (D), the government got rid of blame except in some circumstances. That moves in the direction of weakening.

(E) But this is much stronger. We care more about whether people can let go of blame, not whether the criminal justice system can. And this is saying there are multiple societies with no concept of blame. This goes against the author's premise that "it seems like blaming is an inescapable part of the social life of a human".