If legislators are to enact laws that benefit constituents, they must be sure to consider what the consequences of en...

shunhe on January 9, 2021

Hi @andreaskormusis,

Thanks for the question! So remember we’re being asked for an assumption the argument depends on here. So this is a strengthen with necessary premise question. We can use the negation test to figure out the answer choice, but also note that we can diagram this stimulus:

P: Enact laws that benefit constituents —> Consider actual consequences
P: Repugnance v Enthusiasm
C: ~Enact laws that benefit constituents

And note that the argument is assuming something that connects the two premises to the conclusion somehow, right? So (D) says

Repugnance v Enthusiasm —> ~Consider actual consequences

And when we take the contrapositive of the first premise we get

~Consider actual consequences —> ~Enact laws that benefit constituents

And so using the transitive property and putting everything together, we get

P: Repugnance v Enthusiasm
P: Repugnance v Enthusiasm —> ~Enact laws that benefit constituents
C: ~Enact laws that benefit constituents

Which shows that (D) is the correct answer.

(A) says that legislation won’t benefit constituents unless legislators become less concerned with their own careers. Is that true? Does the argument have to assume this? We can use the negation test. First, let’s diagram:??Benefit constituents —> Less concerned with own careers

And the negation is if the legislation benefits constituents, then legislators won’t necessarily have to become less concerned with their own careers. And that doesn’t weaken the argument, so (A) can’t be the necessary assumption.

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