The stable functioning of a society depends upon the relatively long-term stability of the goals of its citizens. Thi...

Naz June 7, 2014

The conclusion of the argument is the first sentence, i.e. "The stable functioning of a society depends upon the relatively long-term stability of the goals of its citizens." Remember that a conclusion will never support any other part of the passage. It is the main point of the argument.

The last sentence of the passage, i.e. "it should be obvious that a society is stable only if its laws tend to increase the happiness of its citizens," supports the idea that for a society to be stable, the goals of its citizens must have a relative long-term stability, which is the conclusion.

It's helpful if you diagram the argument.The second sentence can be split into two Sufficient & Necessary statements:

(1) "unless the majority of individuals have a predictable and enduring set of aspirations, it will be impossible for a legislature to craft laws that will augment the satisfaction of the citizenry"

(2) "a society is stable only if its laws tend to increase the happiness of its citizens"

Let's start with (1). We know that "unless" introduces the necessary condition. The rest of the sentence must be negated and will become our sufficient condition. So, we can rewrite (1) to be: "If it is possible for a legislature to craft laws that will augment the satisfaction of the citizenry, then the majority of individuals have a predictable and enduring set of aspirations."

ASC ==> MPESA
not MPESA ==> not ASC

We know that "only if" introduces a necessary condition. So, we can rewrite (2) to be: "If a society is stable, then its laws tend to increase the happiness of its citizens."

In order to keep the variables consistent we can interchange "possible for legislature to craft laws that will augment the satisfaction of the citizenry" with "laws tend to increase the happiness of its citizens." Augmenting satisfaction is the same thing as increasing happiness. Keeping variables as consistent as possible is essential when inferring conclusions from Sufficient & Necessary statements. So we can diagram this:

SS ==> ASC
not ASC ==> not SS

We also have our conclusion: "The stable functioning of a society depends upon the relatively long-term stability of the goals of its citizens." When something "depends on" another thing, we can say that the first variable (i.e. whatever is dependent) is the sufficient condition, and the thing being depended on (i.e. what is independent) is the necessary condition. So, we can rewrite this to be: "If a society is stable, then it has a relatively long-term stability of the goals of its citizens."

Again, in order to keep the variable as consistent as possible, we can interchange "relatively long-term stability of the goals of its citizens" with "majority of individuals have a predictable and enduring set of aspirations." Long-term stability of the goals of citizens is the same thing as individuals having an enduring set of aspirations. So we can diagram it:

SS ==> MPESA
not MPESA ==> not SS

We can use the transitive property to connect (2) with (1): SS ==> ASC ==> MPESA, to infer: SS ==> MPESA.

So as you can see, we have a positive transitive argument structure using (1) and (2) to conclude the first statement of the stimulus. Therefore, the last sentence cannot be the conclusion because it supports the first sentence.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Poetic Justice September 8, 2017

Thank you.

Poetic Justice September 8, 2017

Thank you. Thank you!