Q23 - Environmental ethicist: Since whooping cranes,

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Principle Conform (similar to Necessary Assumption)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: We have a greater duty to protect an individual whooping crane than sandhill crane.
Evidence: Since whooping is endangered and sandhill isn't, each individual whooping crane is more important to species survival than is each sandhill crane.

Answer Anticipation:
For almost all Principle questions, we're looking to create a Bridge Idea from premise to conclusion. Here we need a law or rule of thumb that sounds like, "If one individual's survival is more important to its species than is another's, the first one's survival is the one that we hvae a greater duty to protect"

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This goes against the author. She is associating "value to species survival" with "our duty to protect life".

(B) YES, this should work.

(C) There was nothing about "how many species a given species is RELATED TO"

(D) Our conclusion is about protecting an individual member of a species, so we wouldn't want a principle that says "SOMETHING ELSE is more important than protecting an individual member".

(E) This is a reversal. It reads "if greater duty, then one is endangered / one isn't". This argument had the form, "If one is endangered / one isn't, then greater duty".

Takeaway/Pattern: Principle questions are all about knowing which two ideas you're trying to bridge together (from Prem and Conc) and in what order. (C) and (D) brought up new things that weren't in the core (protecting a species as a whole / how many species a species is related to). (A) tried to disconnect the ideas we needed to bridge together, and (E) reversed the order of the connection we needed.

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