Q4 - Philosopher: We should not disapprove

[hyewonkim89]

All the negatives and vocabulary in this passage gave me a hard time with this problem..

Please check my principle.

Should not disapprove the unearthing of truths = We should approve the discovery of truths that we would rather not acknowledge OR that might influence society in harmful ways.

Then I came up with the following conditional logic.

Truths we would rather not acknowledge OR truths that might influence society in harmful ways -> we should approve the discovery of truths.

After coming up with this conditional logic, I can see why B is the answer.

Scientific research should not be restricted (we should approve the discovery of truths - we should not disapprove of the unearthing truths) even if it could lead to harmful applications (truths that might influence society in pernicious ways).

Please let me know if I'm missing something or did something wrong with what I've done so far.

But now I'm having a hard time eliminating other answers.

(A) It only talks about benefiting the society when the contrapositive requires benefiting AND truths that we would rather acknowledge?

(C) Opposite of the argument

(D) out of scope?

(E) out of scope?

Please help!

Thanks in advance!

[tommywallach]

Hey Hyewonkim,

Great question. So a few things to note. This is a principle question, so there is no conditional logic in it. You don't want to apply that term where it doesn't apply. Conditional logic creates a chain of causal relationships. This is simply a rule. It's confusingly worded, but it's not a chain.

The next error you made is equating "we should not disapprove" with "we should approve." Those are very different things, believe it or not. Approval is sometimes the opposite of disapproval in "real life," but logically, the opposite of disapproval is not disapproval. In other words, you could just feel neutral about the truths in question; you don't have go all the way to approval of them.

The principle is: We shouldn't disapprove of truths we don't want to know about or that might have negative effects.

(A) This has nothing to do with the unearthing of truths, but of actions.

(B) CORRECT. In this case, the unearthing of truth is implicit in the "research," and "restriction" would be the same as disapproval (why else would you restrict it?).

(C) This isn't about the unearthing of the truth, but about telling someone that truth.

(D) This could have been great (the first half is perfect), but the rule says we don't care if the truths in question do good for society or not.

(E) is way off. They're saying that the poem wouldn't really unearth truth at all ("a poem need not adhere too strictly to the truth), so this is irrelevant.

Hope that helps!

-t

[hyewonkim89]

Thank you so much for making everything so clear Tommy!