Many mountain climbers regard climbing Mount Everest as the ultimate achievement. But climbers should not attempt thi...

AndreaK on February 8, 2020

Hi @Alyona1983,

Got it! For some reason, the question shows up fine now. However, I can't see your original post about it anymore. So, I'll walk you through the stimulus and the answer choices, and hopefully that covers it! Feel free to reply to this thread if you have another question I don't cover for you here.

I like to start by analyzing the question stem and breaking down exactly what it's asking us to do. Here, we have a strengthen question, even though the stem doesn't in itself use the word “strengthen.” These "justify" language question stems can give people trouble sometimes, so it's important to look at the context in the sentence to figure out what exactly the stem is asking of you by that language. "Justify" can be used in several different ways.

"Which one of the following principals, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning above?"

In order words, that's asking us, "Which one of the following most helps to strengthen the reasoning used above?"

Now let’s take a look at the stimulus and see where that reasoning is going. Our conclusion is that climbers should not attempt the climb because the risk of death or serious injury is very high. We are given further support (fear and exhaustion) that disqualifies a reason why someone might take the risk anyways (spiritual discovery).

Based on this evidence, we can predict a principal to justify that climbers should not do this climb. One prediction that comes to mind is: “If there is risk of serious injury or death and one probably won’t find spiritual discovery anyways, one should not take on that risk.” Let’s see if we can find something like this somewhere in the answer choices.

A) Our conclusion is that climbers shouldn’t be doing this dangerous climb. We don’t know if all the climbers are taking on Everest because of spiritual reasons. This answer choice doesn’t work because it doesn’t cover the bases for climbers who might be climbing primarily for other reasons, and they shouldn’t be climbing either.

B) Bingo! This gets us to our correct answer. It takes the shape of the prediction, and is a principal that ties together our evidence and conclusion to justify the reasoning.

C) Legally prohibiting things is bad language. We want to justify that our climbers shouldn’t climb, not that a law should be made against anything. The last part of this that creates a necessary condition out of spiritual enlightenment also doesn’t fit our mold.

D) This doesn’t address our conclusion, so it doesn’t justify that climbers shouldn’t climb.

E) Like D, this doesn’t address our conclusion, so it doesn’t justify that climbers shouldn’t climb.

Hope this helps!

Alyona1983 on February 10, 2020

Thank you, Andrea. Justify is a tricky question type indeed. My initial question was about answer choice D. I thought if we point out that the spiritual experience could be achieved via different means, it will help our conclusion and strengthen the idea that the climbers shouldn't climb.
Could you please explain why D is not relevant to our conclusion here?

Thank you!
Alyona