Q9 - Anyone believing that no individual can have an effect

[ann8839]

could somebody explain ~?
I got it right with my guts, however, It seems hard for me to understand logically.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting, ann8839!

As with any Principle question, our first stop is breaking down the argument core:

PREMISE: If believe no individual can affect society's future --> feel too helpless to act to change society
CONCLUSION: If want improve society --> should reject belief that individuals are powerless.

So, the argument says that if you want to improve society, you ought to reject the belief that individuals are powerless. Why? Well, let's examine what would happen if you did NOT reject that belief. The premise tells us that accepting that belief would lead to feeling "too helpless to act". If we wanted to avoid that outcome, we should definitely avoid the trigger!

(D) targets that idea. If the improve-society group wants to avoid the outcome of feeling "too helpless to act", then the conclusion that they should the trigger of "accepting belief that individuals are powerless" makes a great deal of sense!

Structurally, we can think of the core this way:

PREMISE: Trigger --> outcome
CONCLUSION: Particular group should avoid trigger.

PRINCIPLE: Particular group should avoid outcome.

Notice that the only group we lay a "should' down on in the stimulus is the people that want to improve society. "Should" recommendations for other groups won't help us get to the conclusion that the society-improvers should do a certain thing. We can use that to eliminate answer choices.

Let's take a tour of the incorrect answers:
(A) We don't care about the people that believe individuals CAN affect things, and what they should or shouldn't do.
(B) We don't care about the people that don't believe in vast historical forces, and what they should or shouldn't do.
(C) We don't care about the people feeling helpless, and what they should or shouldn't do.
(E) A behavior recommendation that applied to every individual would certainly apply to our subgroup of society-improvers, but this gets triggered by people in general feeling powerless in the face of vast historical forces. Since that trigger doesn't actually occur in the stimulus, this blanket rule doesn't help.

Does that help clear things up a bit?

[einuoa]

I'm a bit confused with this question as far as diagramming goes, here's my attempt

A) Believes individuals can affect --> should act to change society for the better
- The argument never said that people should act to change society for the better

B) No one who rejects X (the belief that society's future will be determined by vast historical forces) should believe Y (that individuals cannot have an effect on it).

Is this saying that everyone who rejects X would also reject Y?
Rejects the belief that society's future will be determined... -> ~Believe Individuals cannot have an effect on it
-Would this also be wrong because it has the conclusion/premise backwards?

C) Feels too helpless to act to change society -> should reject the belief that its future will be determined...
-This is wrong because the last part of the answer connects to much, the future will be determined by vast historical forces that individuals are powerless to change?

D) NO one who X (wants to improve society) should accept Y.
Want to improve society -> Reject belief that makes him or her feel too helpless ..... therefore, we should reject the belief that its future will be determined entirely by vast historical forces.

E) I didn't bother diagramming this one because of the "if individuals in general" which makes this answer wrong.

----
I'm still a little bit confused on why B is wrong exactly, I can kind of /feel/ that it's wrong but that's not a good way to solve this question!

[christine.defenbaugh]

It's a bit confusing, isn't it!

It looks to me like you are translating each of the answer choices into a conditional (which is great!), but then focusing mostly on the RESULT of that conditional. I think it's far more useful to focus on the TRIGGER of each conditional to begin.

B) No one who rejects X (the belief that society's future will be determined by vast historical forces) should believe Y (that individuals cannot have an effect on it).

Is this saying that everyone who rejects X would also reject Y?
Rejects the belief that society's future will be determined... -> ~Believe Individuals cannot have an effect on it
-Would this also be wrong because it has the conclusion/premise backwards?

You've got the conditional correct!

When you say "has the conclusion/premise backwards", do you mean that this answer takes something that is the RESULT of a conditional in the conclusion, and tells us what happens next? Because that's a great way to look at it, if so!

We don't care what gets triggered once someone DOES reject the vast historical forces thing - we only care about getting to that result. (B) gives us what happens NEXT, and that doesn't help my argument.

C) Feels too helpless to act to change society -> should reject the belief that its future will be determined...
-This is wrong because the last part of the answer connects to much, the future will be determined by vast historical forces that individuals are powerless to change?

I'm not entirely certain what you mean by 'connects too much'. The result of this conditional is *exactly* what we are looking for in the conclusion. The problem here is that the TRIGGER portion of the conditional does not match the argument. This idea triggering when people are helpless doesn't tell me anything about what happens to people who want to improve society.

Notice that the conclusion of the argument begins with "If you want to improve society". Where the heck did THAT come from?! Ideally, we're going to get something that connects that concept as a trigger.

Now, if you have that in your crosshairs, then you can notice that only (D) gives you a trigger that matches: "No one who wants to improve society..."

Sometimes diagramming each answer out is necessary to be certain of your eliminations. But sometimes, we can shorten our process substantially by targeting what kind of answer will connect the existing dots! Zeroing in on "if you want to improve society" as a trigger is a great way to do just that.

Please let me know if this completely clears up the confusion!