PrepTest 118, Section 3, Question 10
Every moral theory developed in the Western tradition(44 more words not shown)
The statements above, if true,(8 more words not shown)
- AMost people desire(15 more words not shown)
- BA person who(19 more words not shown)
- CMost people have(19 more words not shown)
- DA good life(12 more words not shown)
- EIt is impossible(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A theory can call a life good without making it a life most people would want.
Imagine an intentionally silly theory that praised drinking as many energy drinks as possible. Someone could perfectly follow that ideal while parents still said, “That's not the life I want for my child.” The example separates living up to a theory's standards from meeting the standards people themselves use.
What we’re looking for
The passage makes a claim about the moral theories developed in the Western tradition: most people would reject a life perfectly embodying any one of them as the kind of good life they want for themselves and their children. For the most-supported question, my first thought is disagreement about what counts as a good life. We'll need to keep track of who disagrees with whom. The passage compares people's judgment with the theories' ideals; it doesn't yet compare one theory with another.
Working the answers
- A
The disagreement isn't between good and even better. The passage says people would judge these lives not to be good in the relevant sense. They aren't accepting the theories' idea of a good life and then asking for something more excellent.
- B
This sounds plausible because we may expect different moral theories to have different requirements. But the passage hasn't told us whether their ideals overlap. One person might satisfy several theories, or all of them, and most people could still reject that person's life as the kind they want.
We don't know how fitting one theory relates to fitting another. B asks us to import a comparison among theories, while the passage gives a comparison between their ideals and people's judgments.
- CCorrect
Most people's idea of a good life doesn't match the idea expressed by any of these theories. A life perfectly fulfilling a theory's ideals would count as good by that theory's standards, yet most people would not want that kind of life for themselves or their children.
The wording is any one of these theories. It isn't just one particular theory that most people find unappealing. C preserves the breadth of the stated disagreement without deciding whose view of a good life is correct.
- D
Not wanting a kind of life doesn't mean that life is impossible to live. The passage discusses how people would judge someone who perfectly embodied a theory. It gives us no reason to conclude that nobody could actually do so.
- E
Disagreement with existing theories doesn't prove that no accurate theory could ever be developed. We haven't established that most people's judgment is correct, that the theories are correct, or that a future theory couldn't differ. E turns a fact about judgments into an impossibility claim the passage doesn't support.
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