Q24 - Money doesn't exist

[IsaacS381]

Maybe I'm the only idiot here that picked E ("Whatever is true of money is true of financial markets generally.").

I thought E was definitely part of the core and the argument centered around how the behavior of the financial market is analogous to the behavior of money.

How I read the argument:

PREMISE 1: All that would be needed to make money disappear would be a universal loss of belief in it.
PREMISE 2: Fluctuations in financial markets are the results of mere beliefs of investors.
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CONCLUSION: Money does not exist.

I understand that Premise 2 does not mention anything about the existence explicitly, but I understood it as since extreme downward fluctuation can eventually lead to the "disappearance of its value", I somehow thought it was relevant to the discussion of existence. Is this a stretch?

Also, if I'm wrong about categorizing the last sentence about the financial markets as premise, what is the proper role that it plays? Intermediary conclusion? Or is it a premise that supports PREMISE 1 (which in turn would actually make PREMISE 1 an intermediary conclusion)?

I can kind of see why E is wrong, not because it is out of scope but because it has the relationship reversed (It's saying: Money -> Financial Market, but the argument actually assumes Financial Market -> Money). If the answer choice E instead had said, "Whatever is true of financial markets generally is true of money", could this have been a valid answer?

Nah I made the same mistake first time around. Chose A almost immediately on blind review even though I had for some reason crossed it off initially. I picked E because I thought, "the argument is saying money has this characteristic (not existing) because it's parallel to financial markets, but he doesn't explicitly say that, hence the missing assumption." But I think there are two problems: (1) like you said, the assumption should have been "what's true of financial markets = true of money," AND (2) the analogy isn't the conclusion. The conclusion is "money does not really exist."

SO…that in mind, I chose A because the first two sentences entirely. IF the only thing needed to make $$ disappear would be for everyone to not believe in it, which he says is proof that money doesn't exist, THEN he has to be assuming (a) that things that DO exist continue existing regardless of belief, while (b) things that DO NOT exist do not continue existing without universal belief. Thus, choice A fits option (a) of the assumption: if anything (everything) that exists will do so even if universal belief ceases, that means that things that would go away (i.e., money) if belief ceased are not among the group of things that exist. Aka, conclusion.

EDIT: and to answer your questions, I think the financial markets thing is honestly irrelevant. I just saw it (second time) as a supporting analogy, not as a premise. The only premise we are given is "if people stopped believing in money, it would go away." The missing premise is the right answer choice: "anything that [truly] exists it will exist regardless of belief." Therefore, something that does not exist regardless of belief is not something that [truly] exists.

[william.truong]

I've read through the explanations, and I have to say that I am more confused than ever. I tried my best to understand all the conditional logic and analogy explanations, but they just made me want to abandon this question and move on.

The main problem I am having is that I still don't understand what exactly I'm looking for/what the problem is with the argument.

And what does it mean by "...does not really exist"? Are we talking about money not being tangible or the fact that it does not have any value? Does it really make a difference which definition I choose?

Answer choice A (to me at least) just seems to be the total opposite of the premise.

Hopefully someone can help me out.

Thanks.

Thanks for posting, levyyun!

This is certainly a doozy of a question, questioning the very existence of things in our lives! Talk about some philosophical labyrinths!

Let's return back to the essential core of the argument:

PREMISE: If we stop believing in money, money would disappear
CONCLUSION: Money does not really exist.

First, what does it mean for money to "disappear"? It doesn't really matter here how you define "disappear", as long as it's the same as "does not exist". The author is actually making an argument about the existence of money as a concept, so the tangibility of physical currency isn't really on the table, but you don't really need to sort this out to answer the question.

So, the author is saying in the premise that if we did a certain thing [stopped believe in money], then a certain result would happen [money would stop existing at that point]. He concludes from that that money does exist at all, even now. Somehow, he is using the potential for money to stop existing in the future as evidence that it can't exist now. Just that characteristic of money is somehow enough to kick it out of the club of things that exist.

Now, let's take your observation that there's something about (A) that feels opposite to the premise. And to a certain extent, you're right! The answer choice is all about something continuing to exist, despite our lack of faith! And the premise said that money would STOP existing if we lost faith! Very opposite results!

But notice, the premise is about what happens to money, and how it will stop existing. Answer choice (A) is about things that exist, and how they behave.

So, if we take the premise and (A) together, what we have is that money and things that exist behave completely differently! That would allow us to conclude that money must not be a thing that exists! That potential for it to stop existing in the future is now truly enough for us to conclude that it is not in the category of things that exist!

This is a tough question, in no small part because it's easy to get wrapped up in the actual philosophical question about the existence of things! It's best to resist that temptation, and continue to look at this argument core in the same way we look at every argument core: identify conclusion, identify premise, identify the gap between!

I hope this helps to clear up some confusion on a sticky question!

Replying 5 years later to say that this was a great explanation.
Re-framing the answer choice A in a way that makes it clear that "if money REALLY existed, it would remain existent regardless of people's beliefs" is genius.
Thanks!