PrepTest 129, Section 1, Question 25
Columnist: It is sometimes claimed that the only(95 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AIt is sometimes(21 more words not shown)
- BWe sometimes judge(7 more words not shown)
- CWe should judge(15 more words not shown)
- DPeople are sometimes(16 more words not shown)
- EThe intentions of(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Intentions can matter a great deal. Deliberately hitting someone with a car seems very different from losing control on black ice, even if the injuries are the same. But the columnist asks us to notice something else: circumstances can change how people judge an action even when the person's intention doesn't change.
The cook's mistake illustrates that point. An unexpected ingredient goes into the stew absentmindedly. Ordinarily, people would call the cook forgetful. Now change the circumstances: a customer happens to be severely allergic, eats the stew, and dies. Many people now call the same lapse serious moral negligence.
The cook didn't intentionally arrange for an allergic customer to encounter the ingredient. Yet that circumstance changes the reaction described. We can see why outcomes might affect people's judgments without deciding whether that is the fairest way to assign blame.
What we’re looking for
For the proposition illustrated, keep that distinction. The columnist describes how people do judge, rather than telling us how they should judge. I'd look for the idea that moral judgments can depend on circumstances beyond a person's intentions.
Working the answers
- A
The example doesn't establish when it is fair to judge an action without considering all its circumstances. It shows that a change in circumstances can change people's judgments. A adds a claim about the fairness of making a judgment without considering everything.
- B
The columnist doesn't call either reaction fair or unfair. Describing people as blaming the cook more seriously after a death doesn't establish that they are wrong to do so. We would need an additional standard of fair judgment to reach B.
- C
This recommends treating all negligent people as equally blameworthy regardless of outcomes. The passage neither makes that recommendation nor compares every form of negligence. It describes a case in which the outcome does affect people's judgment without settling whether it ought to.
- DCorrect
The cook is held morally blameworthy in the fatal-allergy scenario, and some of the circumstances are outside the cook's intentional control. In particular, the cook doesn't choose whether a customer has that severe allergy. D needs only some circumstances to be outside intentional control; it doesn't claim the cook bears no responsibility for the mistake or that nothing was within the cook's control.
- E
Showing that intentions aren't the only factor doesn't show that they are rarely decisive. Intentions could be decisive in many cases while circumstances also matter in cases like this one. E turns a limit on an exclusive claim into a broad frequency claim the example doesn't support.
More Must Be True questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Must Be True questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.