PrepTest 101, Section 2, Question 25
The publisher of a best-selling self-help book had,(60 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(9 more words not shown)
- AKnowingly making a(17 more words not shown)
- BKnowingly making a(23 more words not shown)
- CKnowingly making a(27 more words not shown)
- DKnowingly making a(21 more words not shown)
- EKnowingly making a(32 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Does showing someone a path to success mean delivering success to everyone who reads about it?
A book might lay out a demanding route: study hard, complete professional training, and work for years to advance in a career. Describing that route doesn't mean every reader will complete it. That gives me a reason to question the author's quick move from “shows readers how” to a promise of delivering exceptional success to many people.
But set that concern aside and follow the argument we're asked to support. The author says the publisher knowingly made a false claim, yet insists making it wasn't unethical in this case. Why not? Admitting that a claim is false doesn't by itself excuse making it.
What we’re looking for
I'd want a principle explaining when a knowingly false claim needn't be unethical. The answer needs to fit the feature the author gives us here: everyone knows a book cannot make the many exceptionally successful, because exceptional success is limited to the few. We need a reason that feature matters to the ethical judgment, not just a general rule condemning false advertising.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This makes reasonable believability a requirement for calling the knowingly false claim unethical. If it would not be reasonable for people to accept the claim as true, that requirement fails.
The author says everyone knows the promise cannot be fulfilled. On that account, accepting it as true would not be reasonable. A therefore gives the author a way to say that making this obviously false claim is not unethical. We don't have to adopt this as our own moral rule. We need to see how it supports the particular exception the argument makes.
- B
This gives a condition under which a false claim is unethical: the speaker gains at the expense of people who act on it. That doesn't supply a reason this claim is ethical. We also aren't told the relevant gains and losses. Even if the condition were absent, a rule saying one situation is unethical wouldn't tell us every other situation is acceptable.
- C
This could help excuse a false claim if the relevant hardship were absent, because it makes that hardship a requirement for unethical conduct. But the passage doesn't tell us what happens to people who act on the claim or how their hardship compares with the gain they expected. C has a potentially useful kind of rule, but we lack the facts needed to use it here.
- D
Reasonably believing a claim and acting as if it might be true are different. Someone might recognize that an advertising promise is unreasonable and still give the book a try: “I know that can't be guaranteed, but maybe it will work for me.”
So even the author's statement that everyone knows the promise is false doesn't establish that nobody could act as though it might work. D requires that stronger absence of any possibility of such action before it could excuse the claim. The passage doesn't give us that.
- E
“At least those cases” identifies a situation in which a false claim is unethical; it doesn't identify the only unethical situation. Even if people can spot the falsehood without acting on it, E leaves open whether making the claim is unethical for some other reason. We need support for the conclusion that this case is not unethical, and E doesn't supply it.
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