Which one of the following, if true, would most help to make the suggestion in passage A that a harmless pathological...

@MichaelaJ on November 19, 2023

Further explanation needed

Hello- I still do not understand why B is correct and D is incorrect. Can you please explain further?

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Emil-Kunkin on November 20, 2023

The first paragraph of passage B tells us that a rational being authorizes people to threat them in accord with their actions. That is, if a rational being lies to you, it's moral to lie to them, if a rational person steals from you, it's permissible to steal from them.

However, we are trying to square this view with the view that it is not ok to lie to the pathological liar. We know that if the pathological liar is rational it would be ok to lie to them. So to square the views, it must be the case that the pathological liar isn't rational, because otherwise it would be moral to lie to them.

D is wrong for two reasons. First the discussion of the right but not a duty comes in the second paragraph of B, which is not what we are looking for. Second, it doesn't actually reconcile the two views. The fact that having a right does not imply a duty doesn't make it immoral to lie, it just means that we have no obligation to lie.

@MichaelaJ on November 21, 2023

Can you give a breakdown of what the question is asking? This might help me understand your explanation better.

Emil-Kunkin on November 27, 2023

Absolutely! The question asks us to make one thing compatible with another thing. This tells me that there is some tension between the two things, and that our job is to resolve that tension, in a way that is somewhat similar to a paradox question.

Let's look at what the two things are here. The first thing is that we are not justified in lying to a pathological liar. The second is Kant's principle that a rational being implicitly allows people to treat them the way they treat others.

There is indeed some apparent tension. Kant would say that we are authorized to lie to the liar, but passage A does not. We are looking to resolve this tension.

The easiest way to do so is to remember that there was a caveat to kants principle: it only applies to rational beings. So if the liar is not a rational being, kants logic no longer applies so we have resolved the tension.