Some people take their moral cues from governmental codes of law; for them, it is inconceivable that something that i...

Mehran July 12, 2014

We are told that, "some people take their moral cues from governmental codes of law."

This group of people believes that no legally permissible thing could be immoral.

We know that "no" introduces the sufficient condition and the negation of the other part of the statement is the necessary condition.

Now, let's diagram:

LP ==> M
not M ==> not LP

Answer choice (A) states that the "law does not cover all circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another." However, the stimulus just told us that these people believe that if something is permitted by the government, then it is moral. Thus, if all the statements in the stimulus are taken to be true, then the people discussed in the stimulus believe that the law must cover all circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another. So answer choice (A) directly conflicts with the beliefs described in the stimulus.

The issue with answer choice (E) is the word "burdensome." Just because something is burdensome does not mean it is immoral. Therefore, we can have governmental regulations be burdensome while still being moral. Thus, answer choice (E) could be true, i.e. it does not necessarily have to be inconsistent with the beliefs held in the stimulus.

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

Alex January 24, 2017

I'm having issues with B. Can you explain B please? Thank you

Mehran January 29, 2017

@Alex so we know that this group of people believes that no legally permissible thing could be immoral.

LP ==> M
not M ==> not LP

This is a Cannot Be True question, so we are looking for the answer choice that contradicts this belief.

(B) states, "a legally impermissible action is never morally excusable."

not LP ==> not ME
ME ==> LP

This does not contradict the belief in the stimulus. First, "never morally excusable" is not the same thing as "immoral."

Second, even if we assumed these were the same thing, (B) would be negating sufficient and negating necessary. If you are thinking of the rule that we don't just negate, that is when we are trying to determine what Must Be True.

Let's go back to our example from the Sufficient & Necessary lesson:

"All carrots are vegetables."

C ==> V
not V ==> not C

While we cannot conclude with 100% certainty that something that is not a carrot is not a vegetable, it obviously could be true. What if that something was an iPad?

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

christinea303 June 24, 2020

How does no precede the sufficient condition in this case? Is there some hard and fast rule that helped you to determine that? Did the "no" come from the negation of conceivable? How did you figure that?

shunhe June 29, 2020

Hi @christinea303,

Thanks for the question! So generally speaking, we can diagram something like “No X are Y” as X—>~Y. And the way to think about this is to rephrase the “No X are Y” in “if-then” terms. So let’s look at an example: no birds are reptiles. What does this mean? Well, if something is a bird, then it is not a reptile. That encapsulates the original meaning of the sentence “No birds are reptiles.” And from that, we get

Bird —> ~Reptile

Which we see fits the format I mentioned above. So here, the no precedes the sufficient, and then we negate the necessary. And yes, as you thought, we can get the “no” from the “it is inconceivable that something that is legally permissible could be immoral.” Because if we rephrase that, it means that “nothing that is legally permissible could be immoral” (or no legally permissible thing is immoral).

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

Ashley-Tien-2 May 7, 2021

I don't understand the explanation for A. I feel like there was a big jump between these two statements in your explanation: "However, the stimulus just told us that these people believe that if something is permitted by the government, then it is moral. Thus, if all the statements in the stimulus are taken to be true, then the people discussed in the stimulus believe that the law must cover all circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another."

I get that if something is legally permissible, or legal, then it is moral but answer choice A says the law doesn't cover all circumstances so how can we tell whether it is legal or not since there are no laws?

Victoria May 16, 2021

Hi @Ashley-Tien-2,

Happy to help!

The stimulus tells us that, in the eyes of some people, if something is legally permissible, then it cannot be immoral.

Legally permissible --> Not immoral
Immoral --> Not legally permissible

The issue with answer choice (A) is that it conflicts with the contrapositive. These people believe that, if something is immoral, then it is not legally permissible. A key point to remember here is that, for something to not be legally permissible, it must be covered by law. In other words, you can not have an illegal act unless such act is covered by a law which makes it illegal.

The belief outlined in the stimulus is inconsistent with the belief that law does not cover all circumstances in which one person morally wrongs another. Why? Because in the worldview presented in the stimulus, if something is immoral, then it must be illegal.

Therefore, the people described in the stimulus believe that all immoral situations must be illegal (i.e. covered by the law). This fundamentally conflicts with the belief that there are some circumstances where someone commits an immoral act that is not illegal (or not covered by the law).

Hope this helps clear things up a bit! Please let us know if you have any further questions.