PrepTest 105, Section 3, Question 8
Many of us can conceive of penalties that(441 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(9 more words not shown)
- AOf the two(35 more words not shown)
- BAlthough social benefit(32 more words not shown)
- CBecause the retributivist(34 more words not shown)
- DBecause the rationale(39 more words not shown)
- EAlthough it appears(35 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
We've already worked toward a main-point prediction: even the feeling that a punishment should fit the crime may come from weighing benefits against harms. That was a turn from where paragraph 3 seemed to be heading. Retribution first looked like an alternative to social benefit; the ending suggests it might rest on benefit after all.
What we’re looking for
Our answer needs that final relationship, not just the earlier criticism of harsh punishments.
Working the answers
- A
This reverses the relationship. The ending grounds our apparently retributive intuitions in benefit, not our concern for benefit in intuitions about retribution.
- B
This could fit the direction we expected before the last paragraph. But the writer doesn't finish by rejecting social benefit in favor of retribution. The ending offers a way to explain proportionality through benefits and harms.
- C
Tempting: paragraph 3 does give proportionality this role. But C stops there. The final paragraph challenges the idea that only a separate retributive rationale can explain our intuitions. A claim considered along the way isn't the final main point.
- D
This turns an explanation of our intuitions into a strict rule about when punishment is justified. The ending speaks of fairly balancing benefits and harms, not requiring benefits to outweigh harms in every justified punishment. It also explains away the second rationale's purely retributive nature rather than dismissing it as mere retribution.
- ECorrect
Punishments appearing to fit crimes is the intuition we needed to explain. That intuition may itself be “grounded in the first” rationale. E captures both the apparent difference and the ending's explanation of their connection.
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