gtr022001 wrote:
Since empathy is essential for people to be willing to follow moral codes that sometimes require them to ignore their own welfare to help others, civilized society could not exist without empathy.
Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?
(A) Civilized society can exist only if there are people who are willing to at least sometimes ignore their own welfare to help others.
(B) Failure to empathize with other people usually leads to actions detrimental to civilized society.
(C) If everyone in a society is sometimes willing to ignore his or her own welfare to help others, that society will be civilized.
(D) Moral codes that include the requirement that people disregard their own welfare in order to help others have arisen within some civilized societies.
(E) People who feel empathy tend to ignore their own welfare for the sake of others.
guys show me some empathy here and explain this one? i tried negation technique but still got it wrong. i'll post the OA later
EXPLANATION FROM POWER PREP
This stimulus provides the following conditional argument:
Premise: Empathy is essential to the following of moral codes, which sometimes require people to put the interests of others above self-interest.
Conclusion: Therefore civilized society could not exist without empathy.
We can diagram the conditional reasoning in the premise and the conclusion as follows:
Premise: MC --> E (that is, if moral codes are to be followed, empathy is required)
Conclusion: CS --> E (that is, if civilized society is to exist, empathy is required)
When we examine the two conditional statements above, we can see that empathy is the overlapping theme, the necessary variable in both the premise and the conclusion. In order to connect this conclusion to this premise, the argument requires a supporter assumption: A premise which, although not stated explicitly in the stimulus, bridges the gap between the two conditional statements. Since we are asked to find the choice that provides the required assumption, we should look for the answer that ties together the loose ends of this argument: Moral codes and civilized society.
Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice, as it supplies the needed link between moral codes and civilized society. We know from the stimulus that the following of moral codes requires at least some who will put others interests over their own, so without such people, moral codes could not be followed. If civilized society also depends on the existence of these sometimes selfless people, as this answer choice provides, then we can conclude that without such people, moral codes could not be followed, and civilized society could not exist.
Answer choice (B): This choice is causal rather than conditional, so it should be eliminated. Conditional reasoning requires conditional assumptions. Furthermore, since the stimulus specifies that empathy is only
sometimes required, this leaves open the possibility that, most of the time, civilized society is fine without such empathy. Thus we need not assume that lack of empathy is usually detrimental.
Answer choice (C): This choice is the Mistaken Reversal of the required assumption, so we should eliminate it. Also, the stimulus sought to establish a
necessity, whereas this choice concerns a
sufficiency. That is, the stimulus says that civilized society requires some degree of selflessness, whereas this answer choice presents the assumption that this selflessness
guarantees that a society will be civilized.
Answer choice (D): The fact that certain moral codes have arisen in some civilized societies does not establish a
conditional link between civilized society and moral codes. It is therefore irrelevant to the conditional argumentative strategy in the stimulus.
Answer choice (E): A description of the results of empathy does not establish a link between moral codes and civilized society, so this choice is incorrect.
close
Updated on: 19 Feb 2011, 01:34
41%
(02:13)
wrong 
