A university should not be entitled to patent the inventions of its faculty members. Universities, as guarantors of i...
cassidibrooks92August 17, 2020
Correct answer
I am having a hard time understanding how A. it is the conclusion is the correct answer. I thought it was a principle that is used to support the conclusion. Can you please explain
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Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at this argument. We’re told that a university shouldn’t get to patent the inventions of its faculty members. Why? What supports this? Well, the stuff that we’re told later on, which suggests that this is a conclusion of some kind. So let’s see: universities guarantee intellectual freedom and should encourage the free flow of ideas. But if they retain the right to patent, they have a motive to suppress information in some cases. And suppressing information about these discoveries is incompatible with the university’s obligation to promote the free flow of ideas.
So what’s the flow of the passage here? Well, it looks like everything after the first sentence goes to support the first sentence, the overarching idea that a university shouldn’t be entitled to patent the inventions of its faculty members. I’d say the argument looks something like
P: Universities should encourage the free flow of ideas P: University that retain the right to patent have a motive to suppress information sometimes P: Suppressing information is incompatible with the university’s obligation to promote the free flow of ideas C: A university shouldn’t be entitled to patent the inventions of its faculty members.
And so we can see that the claim is a conclusion, which makes (A) the correct answer.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
AmySeptember 1, 2020
I still can't understand how this is a conclusion. To me, it looks like a premise.
