September 2017 LSAT Section 1 Question 21

Ethicist: It is morally right to reveal a secret only if one has a legal obligation to do so and will not harm onesel...

kens on August 20, 2020

September 2017 SEC 1 Q21

I still have trouble understanding the answer even after reading the thread. Can we not conclude that Kathryn's action was morally right from the fact that she did not promise not to reveal the secret? Please help me understand and thanks in advance! /promise or /harm other--->morally right

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shunhe on August 21, 2020

Hi @kenken,

Thanks for the question! So let’s take a look at what we’re being told here by the stimulus. We know that it’s morally right to reveal a secret only if one has a legal obligation and won’t harm oneself by doing so. So “only if” is going to introduce a necessary condition, so we can diagram this

Morally right to reveal secret —> Legal obligation & Won’t harm self

Now for the second sentence: it’s morally wrong to reveal a secret if one’s promised not to and if revealing it will harm others. Well, this is a straightforward if-then, so this is diagrammed

Promised not to reveal & revealing likely to harm others —> Morally wrong to reveal secret
?So now we need to find something that this principle will help justify. Well, let’s take a look at (A), which tells us that Kathryn doesn’t promise to reveal a secret and it benefits people, and revealed a secret. She wasn’t under a legal obligation to reveal it, so the action wasn’t morally right.

Well, let’s take a look at the contrapositive of the first statement:

~Legal obligation v Harm self —> ~Morally right to reveal secret

So since she wasn’t under a legal obligation, the sufficient condition is fulfilled, and so it wasn’t morally right to reveal it. (A) is justified by this principle and is the correct answer. It doesn’t matter whether or not she promised to reveal it. All that matters is that she didn’t have a legal obligation to reveal it, but revealed it anyway.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

kens on August 21, 2020

Thanks for the reply! So, would it be correct to conclude that, because she didn’t have a legal obligation, even though part of the act was morally right, it would still be considered not morally right in the end? Hope this makes sense.

shunhe on August 21, 2020

Because it meets the sufficient condition of not having a legal obligation, nothing else matters, and it's not morally right--hope that answers your question.