Q23 - If an act of civil

[jrany12]

Hi,
Why is the answer to this D? I thought the other answers fit as well and included the principles given in the stimulus. Thanks.

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your question!

Here we've got a Principle Example question that gives us two clear conditional statements about acts of civil disobedience:

if done out of self-interest alone ---> not justified

if required by one's conscience ---> justified

We're looking for an example that conforms to one or both of these statements, and we can expect the wrong answers to try to tempt us with negated or reversed logic (as opposed to reversed and negated logic, a.k.a., the contrapositive, which would be valid).

(D) is correct. Maria's conscience required her to violate the law, therefore her civil disobedience was justified. This directly conforms to the second statement. Further, although her own interest would be served by a repeal of the law in question, we're also told that she was acting "on behalf of all publishers," so we know that she wasn't acting out of self-interest alone.

(A) is negated logic. We know that pure self-interest means civil disobedience is unjustified, but that doesn't mean that acting purely out of concern for others makes it justified.

(B) is negated logic. We know that if one's conscience requires it, civil disobedience is justified, but we cannot infer that if one's conscience doesn't require it, the act is unjustified.

(C) is negated in exactly the same way as (A).

(E) is negated in exactly the same way as (B).

Does that make sense to you?

[jrany12]

I was reading answer choice C (and the others similarly) as:
Justified ---> not done out of self-interest alone (or concern others)
which would be the contrapositive of the first conditional statement,
if done out of self-interest alone ---> not justified.

But is that not the case because the conclusion of C goes on the right side of the conditional, making it
concern others --> justified ?

[giladedelman]

Exactly, exactly.

[theaether]

if required by one's conscience ---> justified

(B) is negated logic. We know that if one's conscience requires it, civil disobedience is justified, but we cannot infer that if one's conscience doesn't require it, the act is unjustified.

(E) is negated in exactly the same way as (B).

I didn't think that E was negated in the exact same way as B. B has mistaken negation without the reversal, but E has negation as well as the reversal. B says not required by conscience ---> not justified. E first says the act was not justified, then says it was not required by conscience. Shouldn't that be a proper contrapositive? (on a random note, the message board auto spell checks contrapositive as incorrect hehe)

The situation followed by colon and then explanation format is confusing my translation of the answer choices into if--> then format I think.

[giladedelman]

Be careful! When analyzing an argument, including the arguments in the answer choices here, we care about the logical structure, not the phrase order. Your mistake here is to assume that answer (E) proceeds in premise-conclusion order. In fact, it starts with the conclusion. The colon indicates that an explanation is to follow. So the logical structure of (E) is

Louise's conscience didn't require her to organize the parade --> her act was not justified civil disobedience

This is a negation of

conscience requires --> civil disobedience justified

Does that clear this up for you?

[littlebibliophile]

I thought the previous explanations were good, and I figured I'd just add mine as well, just in case some people out there understand things in terms of diagramming. Hope someone finds it useful!

This question defines civil disobedience as willfully breaking a specific law in order to bring about a legal reform. The stimulus tells us that if an act of civil disobedience is done out of self interest alone and not out of concern for other people it is not justified, but it is justified if one’s conscience requires one to do so.

(A) doesn’t fit the principle because its reasoning for saying that Keisha’s protest was justified is that she acted out of concern for others. However, the stim can be represented as: If done out of self-interest alone → not justified. From this we can see that if something is not done out of self interest alone (~ Suff), we can’t know if it is justified (~Nec) based on that alone.

(B) Says that Janice was not justified because her conscience did not require her action. The stim says: If one's conscience requires → Justified. It would be incorrect to say ~ Required → ~Justified, so we know we can’t infer this from the stimulus.

(C) Seems to make the same logical error as (A). In other words, from this choice we know that it was not done out of self interest, but the stimulus says:
If done out of self-interest alone → not justified
and answer (C) says:
(~ done out of self interest alone) → (~not justified): aka justified

(D) is correct because Maria deliberately violated a law to protest a law. She is a publisher, so she would benefit from the repeal of the law, but she did so because her conscience required it. The stim told us: If one's conscience requires → Justified, so we know her act was justified.

(E) also uses improper negation. It says that Louise was not justified because her conscience didn’t require her act. So the reasoning is:

~ Required → ~Justified

but we know that this is an improper negation of the stimulus’ info which says:

If one's conscience requires → Justified

[jason.tarre]

Hey Gilad,

Why can't I take the negation and reversal of the first statement of the stimulus and turn it into justified --> not self interest alone and some concern for others?

I know it's not essential to get the correct answer, but I'm interested to know what I'm reading incorrectly for next time.

Thank you for the help.

[giladedelman]

Where did I say you couldn't do that? That would be fine. That would be a funky answer choice, though: Jason's actions were justified, therefore they were not done purely out of self-interest.

[zip]

There could have been an even more funky choice: If an action is required by one's conscience then it was not done totally out of self interest. C-->J-->not TSI.