Q9 - Cultural historian: Universal acceptance of

[jenndg100380]

Please tell me if my thought process is correct. I got this wrong the first time and am trying to work through it again.

[conclusion]
theories natr'l objects subject natr'l forces outside contr'l ---- decline moral

[premises]
not responsible ---- unashamed
unashamed ---- decline moral

the shift is between the theory of being subject to natr'l forces outside's one's contr'l to not feeling responsible....

which brings us to B. if humans see themselves as natr'l objects which are subject to natr'l forces outside their contr'l, they will lose a sense of responsibility (which ties into the premise)

[bbirdwell]

Absolutely! You'll notice that on many "if assumed" questions like this one, conditional statements can be used to effectively symbolize them. Once this happens, find the "odd man" in the conclusion -- the concept that appears in the conclusion but nowhere in the evidence (here, "responsibility"). The correct answer must tie that "odd man" to the evidence somehow, just like you did here...

[rdown2b]

Can someone explain why it cant be c thought? It seems to me that its the contrapositive of the argument not responsible-->
unashamed so the c answer seems to say shame---> responsible. also b seems to be incomplete because it just says human beings are natural objects, it doesn't state that they are also prone to natural objects which seems to be a requirement to not feel responsible.

[bbirdwell]

The argument, in a nutshell:

if ppl don't believe they are responsible --> feel unashamed
widespread unashamed --> general moral decline

therefore:
universal acceptance of theories that humans are only natural objects outside indiv. control --> general moral decline

Our job is to tie the evidence together to arrive at the conclusion. It's sort of like a matching game. The only part of the conclusion that does not appear in the evidence is the part about being a natural object outside of control. Thus, this part MUST be in our answer, for this is where the gap is, this is what we must tie to the evidence.

How must we tie it to the evidence? Well, we want to arrive at "general decline." The starting point for the conditional chain is "ppl don't feel responsible." Therefore, in order to draw our conclusion, we should connect "ppl don't feel responsible" to "natural object..."

This is what (B) does.

(C) is indeed a contrapositive of the piece of evidence you suggested. As such, it merely repeats something we already know, and doesn't add anything to the argument. And it remains within the evidence, never reaching to connect to the "natural object" part of the conclusion that we must connect.

Notice how there is only one choice that even mentions that part of the conclusion? This is how it can be easily recognized.

[shaynfernandez]

I have recently made a switch from the LR bible to the Manhattan LR book. I have to say that though the LRB is very informative it doesn't teach nearly as well as the Manhattan book. With that being said, going over this problem it was obvious to me that this was a sufficient assumption question. So we are expecting to connect a chain that's been broken by an assumption. So B Immediately sticks out.

But as for answer choice D if this were a necessary assumption question would D be correct?

[timsportschuetz]

I actually disagree with the above posters. The conclusion seems to be the first sentence of the stimulus. Thus, the unique term I searched for in the answer choices was "natural objects". This term needs to be connected to the conditional string presented in the second sentence of the stimulus.

[ohthatpatrick]

You're correct, the 1st sentence is the conclusion. (Any sentence followed by "After all" is a conclusion)

I'm not sure where you got that people were implying anything else.

I think Brian's original post accidentally implied that "responsible" came from the conclusion, but everything else everyone has been saying has been treating the first sentence as the conclusion.

To answer the previous question, (D) sounds REEEALLY close to a Necessary Assumption.

Would it kill this argument if NO theories ever said "humans aren't responsible for their actions"?

No.

The author needs people to believe that they're not responsible for their actions, but it doesn't have to be because a scientific theory specifically told them that. It could still serve the author's purposes if scientific theories merely laid out a picture of a deterministic universe (without any claim to whether people have responsibility), and PEOPLE just made the inference from that they aren't responsible for their actions.

Hope this helps.

[emily315]

just got a question, whenever I encounter this type of question, I have to map every out to figure out the logical lapse.....and the mapping process is kinda time consuming, does every one do that on real test? a little worried about the speed
what is the right mental process to deal with this kind of problems? or is that we just need to be more adept at these kinds of questions?

[ohthatpatrick]

It's all of that.

First of all, Sufficient Assumption is a real front-loaded question. You SHOULD spend way more than average time on the argument and way LESS time on the answer choices.

By the time we reach the answer choices, we already know what we're looking for, so we can just scan for what we're missing ... we don't need to read and consider every answer choice.

In some cases, diagramming is really critical because otherwise it's hard to see the conditional chain created.

In this example, it's more debatable. Some people will definitely put that last sentence together as they read.

If you don't believe you're responsible, you stop feeling ashamed, and so you get a general moral decline.

Since the conclusion said "XYZ would get you a general moral decline", we could anticipate that we need to connect "XYZ" to "don't believe you're responsible".

In this case, XYZ is "everyone accepting that we're just natural objects subject to natural forces".

A couple things you could check yourself on for this example:
1. When you hit the "after all", did you realize 'Well, I guess the first sentence was the conclusion. Maybe I should re-read it, since THAT is the claim I have to prove.'

2. After you've re-read the first sentence and thought about the meaning of what they're talking about (i.e. that we see ourselves like animals / rocks / stars ... not supernatural souls with free will), the 2nd sentence says "After all, if we don't think we're responsible for our actions" ...

That should feel like a record scratch that brings the conversation to a halt.
Wait, wha?

Who said anything about "not believing we're responsible for our actions"?

The students I've seen who mentally intuit the answer to this question without diagramming are almost always thinking about the actual subject matter of the first sentence and hearing that "disconnect" with where the 2nd sentence starts to take the conversation.

All that being said, although this question can definitely be done without diagramming, many Sufficient Assumption questions really ARE easier with diagramming and you basically need to get a lot of reps when it comes to quickly symbolizing / linking conditional claims.

The good news is that once you get so good at doing so that you can do so relatively quickly, your brain gets so comfortable with conditional logic that it starts to be able to do it more mentally.

So you need to practice writing it out a lot early on in order to earn the second nature awareness you might eventually reach, at which point you DON'T need to write as much stuff out.

[bobjon1259]

I'd really appreciate someone providing additional clarification for this question. I was unable to answer it correctly because I evidently paid too much attention to "universal acceptance of" in the first sentence. I firmly understand the conditional chain and how the pieces must interact with one another in order to find the correct answer, but am having trouble understanding how answer choice (B) conforms to "universal acceptance of scientific theories that regard humans as ..." At best, answer choice (B) indicates that a subset of human beings who view themselves as natural objects will lose their sense of responsibility. How is it permissible to extrapolate that to "universal acceptance?" Doesn't universal acceptance mean that all human beings conform to the ideology? What happened to the human beings who DON'T view themselves as only natural objects? This is where I'm lost, because I don't think answer choice (B) accounts for that group of humans.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[ohthatpatrick]

The conclusion is trying to prove that
"If everyone accepts (universal acceptance) the idea that people are just natural objects, then we'll ultimately get to a decline in morality."

I think your struggle is in thinking that (B) needs to get us to "Universal Acceptance". But it doesn't.

Consider this argument:
If Hillary is the only candidate in 2020, the Democrats will lose. After all, if Democrats aren't enthused about their candidate, then turnout will be low, and a low turnout is bound to lead to a Democratic loss.

What's the missing piece?
(A) Democrats wouldn't be enthused about Hillary as their candidate.

Does that idea guarantee that Hillary would be the only candidate? No. But it doesn't need to.
Sufficient Assumptions are ideas that, if you add them to the evidence, they allow you to guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

If
Dems wouldn't be psyched about Hill
not being psyched would lead to low turnout
low turnout would lead to loss

then
If Hill is the only candidate, then Dems will lose.



You're really getting thrown off on Q9 because it has a conditional conclusion. We don't have to PROVE/ESTABLISH that Hillary will be the only candidate in order to PROVE that "IF she were the only candidate", something would happen.

Similarly, we don't need to prove that every human will regard themselves as a natural object (universal acceptance).

We're only trying to prove a claim that "IF every human were to regard themselves as a natural object, then moral decline would result."

IF every human regards themselves as a natural object,
then (B) tells us that in that world, every human would lose a sense of responsibility.
The premises continue that story until we hit moral decline.

Hope that helps.

[bobjon1259]

The conclusion is trying to prove that
"If everyone accepts (universal acceptance) the idea that people are just natural objects, then we'll ultimately get to a decline in morality."

I think your struggle is in thinking that (B) needs to get us to "Universal Acceptance". But it doesn't.

Consider this argument:
If Hillary is the only candidate in 2020, the Democrats will lose. After all, if Democrats aren't enthused about their candidate, then turnout will be low, and a low turnout is bound to lead to a Democratic loss.

What's the missing piece?
(A) Democrats wouldn't be enthused about Hillary as their candidate.

Does that idea guarantee that Hillary would be the only candidate? No. But it doesn't need to.
Sufficient Assumptions are ideas that, if you add them to the evidence, they allow you to guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

If
Dems wouldn't be psyched about Hill
not being psyched would lead to low turnout
low turnout would lead to loss

then
If Hill is the only candidate, then Dems will lose.



You're really getting thrown off on Q9 because it has a conditional conclusion. We don't have to PROVE/ESTABLISH that Hillary will be the only candidate in order to PROVE that "IF she were the only candidate", something would happen.

Similarly, we don't need to prove that every human will regard themselves as a natural object (universal acceptance).

We're only trying to prove a claim that "IF every human were to regard themselves as a natural object, then moral decline would result."

IF every human regards themselves as a natural object,
then (B) tells us that in that world, every human would lose a sense of responsibility.
The premises continue that story until we hit moral decline.

Hope that helps.

Thank you, Patrick. That was very helpful!