cherukuri1011 wrote:
In order to expand its mailing lists for e-mail advertising, the Outdoor Sports Company has been offering its customers financial incentives if they provide the e-mail addresses of their friends. However, offering such incentives is an unethical business practice, because it encourages people to exploit their personal relationships for profit, which risks damaging the integrity of those relationships.
Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning in the argument?
(A) It is unethical for people to exploit their personal relationships for profit if in doing so they risk damaging the integrity of those relationships.
(B) If it would be unethical to use information that was gathered in a particular way, then it is unethical to gather that information in the first place.
(C) It is an unethical business practice for a company to deliberately damage the integrity of its customers’ personal relationships in any way.
(D) It is unethical to encourage people to engage in behavior that could damage the integrity of their personal relationships.
(E) Providing a friend’s personal information to a company in exchange for a financial reward will almost certainly damage the integrity of one’s personal relationship with that friend.
Context: In order to expand its mailing lists for e-mail advertising, the Outdoor Sports Company has been offering its customers financial incentives if they provide the e-mail addresses of their friends.
Premise: Such incentives encourage people to exploit their personal relationships for profit, which risks damaging the integrity of those relationships.
Conclusion: Offering such incentives is an unethical business practice.
If we want to justify our reasoning, we need to establish that "encouraging people to exploit relations which could damage those relations is an unethical practice."
(A) It is unethical for people to exploit their personal relationships for profit if in doing so they risk damaging the integrity of those relationships.
We need to say that it is unethical to encourage people to exploit relations. Whether it is unethical for people to exploit relations is irrelevant. We want to establish that the company's practice is unethical, not that people are behaving unethically.
(B) If it would be unethical to use information that was gathered in a particular way, then it is unethical to gather that information in the first place.
Not necessary. We are just saying that the means to the end is unethical. Is gathering info, unethical, we don't care.
(C) It is an unethical business practice for a company to deliberately damage the integrity of its customers’ personal relationships in any way.
The company is not damaging the integrity of its customer's relations. It is encouraging people to take steps that could damage their relationships.
(D) It is unethical to encourage people to engage in behavior that could damage the integrity of their personal relationships.
Correct. Exactly what we needed as discussed before.
(E) Providing a friend’s personal information to a company in exchange for a financial reward will almost certainly damage the integrity of one’s personal relationship with that friend.
We need to establish that encouraging that kind of behaviour in people is unethical. Whether the relation will actually be damaged, we don't know.
Answer (D)
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Updated on: 17 Feb 2014, 11:09
48%
(02:12)
wrong 
