@igoldman Happy to help. D is the correct answer because the mayor only mentions two groups of people: (1) "pedestrians who invariably violate this law" and (2) "those who comply with the law." By only looking at these two extremes, the mayor forgets about people who do not fall into either category (those who sometimes comply and sometimes violate the law) and does not take into account how the law affects their behavior. Answer choice C states that the mayor "ignores the possibility that a law might not serve a useful purpose even if it does deter the kind of behavior it prohibits." This is incorrect because the mayor does not ignore that possibility. In fact, the mayor's argument states that "a law must deter the kind of behavior it prohibits" in order to be useful. As shown in the video, this can be diagrammed as UP -> DBP. The contrapositive of this is not DBP -> not UP. Neither of these statements have DBP as the sufficient condition, so neither are commenting on what can happen when the prohibited behavior is deterred. Therefore, the possibility that a law might not serve a useful purpose even if it deters the behavior it prohibits is consistent with the mayor's argument.
hbensonon October 6, 2021
Hi Skyler,
Could you exclude answer choice C solely because the "must" in the passage indicates absolute? Therefore, a law must always deter the behavior it prohibits. Is this a correct deduction?
