One should never sacrifice one's health in order to acquire money, for without health, happiness is not obtainable.Th...

Naz on January 22, 2014

Here we have a Strengthen with Sufficient Premise question. Remember that a sufficient premise is sufficient for a conclusion, if and only if the existence of the premise guarantees or brings about the existence of the conclusion.Therefore, we need to find the premise that 100% guarantees the conclusion.

The way you want to attack these answer choices is two-pronged. Ask yourself, does it strengthen? If it doesn't, then cross it out and continue to the next answer choice. If it does strengthen, however, then ask yourself whether or not the premise 100% guarantees the conclusion.

"One should never sacrifice one's health in order to acquire money, for without health, happiness is not obtainable."

We have concluded that one should never sacrifice one's health in order to acquire money.

So if we are sacrificing health, then it is not in order to acquire money.

C: not He ==> not AM
AM ==> He

What is the reason the stimulus gives? Without health, happiness is not obtainable.

P1: HaO ==> He
not He ==> not HaO

Notice our premise states "not He ==> not HaO" but our conclusion is "not He ==> not AM."

There is a jump in the argument from "happiness not obtainable" (not HaO) to "not in order to acquire money" (not AM). Therefore, we are looking for an answer that connects happiness being obtainable to money being acquired.

Answer choice (A) passes the first prong of our test because it strengthens the argument by connecting the idea of happiness to money.

"Money should be acquired only if its acquisition will not make happiness unobtainable."

Now let's see if answer choice (A) guarantees the conclusion.

(A) is diagrammed as follows:

AM ==> HaO
not HaO ==> not AM

We can connect the principle rule of answer choice (A) to the first premise using the transitive property (i.e. AM ==> HaO ==> He) to conclude:

AM ==> He
not He ==> not AM

As you can see, this is the same as the conclusion of the stimulus. Thus, answer choice (A) leads us directly to the conclusion of the stimulus. So, answer choice (A) passes both prongs of the test.

Hope that was helpful! Please let us know if you have any other questions.