PrepTest 123, Section 3, Question 16
Philosopher: Nations are not literally persons; they have(54 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(6 more words not shown)
- Acannot continue to(20 more words not shown)
- Bcannot survive unless(11 more words not shown)
- Ccan never be(7 more words not shown)
- Dis not worth(9 more words not shown)
- Eshould always be(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A nation isn't literally a person. Fine. But does that mean it can't have moral rights or responsibilities? A group of people might have duties even though the group doesn't have its own thoughts or feelings. I'd want more support before accepting the philosopher's jump.
Then the passage gives us another claim: a nation can't survive unless many citizens believe it has those rights and responsibilities. That belief is supposedly what gets them to make the sacrifices citizenship requires.
So, within the philosopher's account, the nation needs people to believe something the philosopher has just called false. That's the connection to carry into the blank. We aren't being asked to settle whether nations really have moral duties. We're being asked what follows from the account we've been given.
What we’re looking for
My prediction is that a nation's survival requires many citizens to hold a false belief. The philosopher might be wrong about the underlying ideas, but those ideas fit together in a clear way: no actual national rights or responsibilities, yet a need for citizens to believe in them.
Working the answers
- A
This demands some other motivation besides the false belief. The passage points in the opposite direction: that belief is the motivation citizens need, and nothing else could prompt the required sacrifices. A removes the very thing the philosopher says the nation must rely on.
- BCorrect
Which beliefs are literally false, according to this philosopher? That the nation has moral rights and responsibilities. Which beliefs must many citizens hold for the nation to survive? Those same beliefs. Putting the two claims together gives us B.
This doesn't require the government to deceive anyone deliberately. Citizens might arrive at the belief on their own. The supported conclusion concerns what many citizens must believe, not who tells them what to think.
- C
Even if a nation lacks moral rights and responsibilities, people could still direct praise or blame at it. They might be mistaken in doing so under the philosopher's account, but that doesn't mean a nation can never be the target. More directly, C leaves out the passage's central connection between citizens' beliefs and national survival.
- D
Are the sacrifices worth making? The passage doesn't assess their value. It says what motivates them and why they are needed for the nation to survive. Those claims don't establish that the nation is unworthy of its citizens' sacrifices.
- E
“Always” is far beyond what we have. A claim about whether nations literally possess certain moral features doesn't tell us that every thought about a nation should be metaphorical. We need a conclusion about the beliefs necessary for survival, not a universal rule for how to speak or think about nations.
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