Q22

[skapur777]

BIIIG problems with this question. .

I picked B but let me give you my thought process for the answers:

A: eliminate, irrelevant.
B: keep possibly
C: eliminate beacuse the principle of preventing harm is the justification for rules that prevent directly harmful actions (anabolic steroids) and others that prevent indirectly harmful actions (I was confused by this sentence, doesn't the second paragraph indirectly prevent harmful actions, since the act that is forbidden is not inherently harm-producing)
D: eliminate
E: eliminated for some strange reason...thought maybe it was too limited in scope?

Believe it or not, main point questions are still my biggest fear...can you perhaps give me some more insight into this?

[noah]

It's not the easiest passage, so I'm not surprised if you had difficulty with this question. However, a consistent focus on the scale should have given you this:

Para 1: some say laws only legitimate if preventing harm. This can be applied to some situations that at first glance seem to not warrant.

Para 2: it seems like coordination is the goal, but preventing harm underlies these examples.

Para 3: more subtle examples of how preventing harm underlies need for law.

If you picked up on those issues, (E) would have been pretty obvious. (That's clearly a major "if"!).

If you're wondering what the scale for this passage is, I'd say something like "preventing harm justifies a limited number of laws" vs. "preventing harm justifies many types of laws."

As for the wrong answers:

(A) is out of scope - there's no discussion of making laws apply equitably.

(B) is tempting, but it focues on whether requiring social conformity to prevent harm is justifiable - not whether the prevention of harm is a possible justification for all laws.

(C) is not exactly contradicted, but it's mis-construing why the author mentioned achieving coordination. It's mentioned to discuss that even the goal of achieving coordination can be actually seen as preventing harm.

(D) is suspiciously strong (always justified), too broad (community standards) and out of scope (restricting individual liberty).

I hope that helps.

[hwsitgoing]

Hello,


Could you please go over why B is incorrect? Is it because it doesn't mention anything specifically about preventing harm? It seems to imply it however...Also, is C incorrect because of the wording where it describes "rules that prevent directly harmful actions" when the passage only went over indirectly harmful actions?

Thanks!

[noah]

Hello,


Could you please go over why B is incorrect? Is it because it doesn't mention anything specifically about preventing harm? It seems to imply it however...Also, is C incorrect because of the wording where it describes "rules that prevent directly harmful actions" when the passage only went over indirectly harmful actions?

Thanks!

I went up and edited my explanation to include a discussion of the wrong answers - tell me if any don't make sense - it's been a while since I've dug into that passage.

As for (C) - coordination is discussed for both direct and indirect, so that's not an issue. It's that this answer focuses on justifying coordination as a justification, when the passage is about preventing harm as a justification.

[chunsunb]

One reason I think (B) is wrong because of the phrase "harmful to the nonconforming individual."
Look at line 7-11: Only the goal of preventing harm to others (not that of preventing harm to the nonconforming individual himself) is the mentioned justification for social conformity.

[Dtodaizzle]

I eliminated E because the last sentence of the first paragraph states that the "legal sanctions are against some forms of nonconforming behavior," whereas answer choice E is about "justifying laws that do not at first glance appear to be designed to prevent such harm."

Since E doesn't specify some forms of nonconforming behavior, why can't we eliminate it for being too broad?

[ohthatpatrick]

The main point sentence, lines 7-11, is a wonderful paraphrase of (E).

7-11: The goal of preventing harm to others ....
(E): The principle of preventing harm to others ....

7-11: would also justify legal sanctions against ...
(E): can be used to justify laws that ....

7-11: some forms of nonconforming behavior to which this goal (of preventing harm) might at first not seem to apply
(E): do not at first glance appear to be designed to prevent such harm

I mean ... I see the disparity you're asking about, but we can't expect them to give us a verbatim restatement of the main point.

"nonconforming behavior" just means "you broke the law / you didn't conform to it".

We're only seeing that language because of the 2nd sentence, where the legal theorists would say "you can't write a law that forces people to conform to a certain behavior if the behavior you're prohibiting, the nonconforming behavior, doesn't inherently cause harm to others."

So there's really no difference at all between 7-11 and (E).

This passage, like so many others, starts with someone else's point of view and then pivots into the author's main point (an "I disagree" type statement) using but/yet/however.

OTHER POINT OF VIEW:
you can only call something a crime and criminally punish it if the underlying behavior would harm someone else.
if an act is intrinsically harmless or if the act only harms oneself, then you can't have criminal penalties against it.
You can't force people to conform to some rule if nonconforming wouldn't harm someone else.

AUTHOR'S OBJECTION / MAIN POINT (lines 7-11):
You're kinda right, but kinda wrong.
I agree, our goal is to prevent harm. But there are cases where you need to make a law against something that doesn't directly cause harm, but where harm would result if there weren't a law.

P2 ... "in many situations" ... [you need a coordinating rule because a lack of one would cause harm]

P3 ... "in some other situations" ... [you need a rule against 'self-inflicted' harm if it would indirectly encourage other people to inflict harm on themselves]