This is an interesting passage. I would appreciate if any of the experts could comment on my reasoning
Premise 1: Breaking promises is bad.
Premise 2: Implicitly promise to tell the truth. Lying = breaking promises = bad.
Conclusion (teacher's point): if Jeannie is well, tell the truth and you won't break a promise, because you will not lie.
A. Most people always tell the truth
- Is not relevant here what "most" people do. This statement does not really affect the conclusion of the argument.
B. It is sometimes better to act in a friend's best interest than to keep a promise to that friend
- This option assumes that telling the truth to the teacher (that J is not sick) is in her best interest, and the student should not keep a verbal promise. However, there is no evidence that, even if J is indeed not sick, revealing the truth to the teach will be in the J's best interest. So, this option is a bit complicated. Let's keep it unless we find a better one.
C. Breaking a promise leads to worse consequences than does telling a lie
- Do we need to know about consequences? Probably not.
D. Some implicit promises are worse to break than some explicit ones.
- The explicit promise is the verbal promise of the student to say that J is at home sick. The implicit promise is that one promises to tell the truth (premise 2). So, according to the teacher, the student should break the implicit promise and tell the truth. Does not look much better than B...
E. One should never break a promise
- This is an "idealistic" real-world statement. Definitely not relevant to answer the question, but indeed important in Real World.
nightblade354 could you please help with this problem?