PrepTest 134, Section 1, Question 16
The view that every person is concerned exclusively(46 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(6 more words not shown)
- Ainfers merely from(17 more words not shown)
- Binfers that because(18 more words not shown)
- Cinfers that because(20 more words not shown)
- Dattempts to discredit(9 more words not shown)
- Efails to consider(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Do these theorists recognize where their belief leads?
My first reaction is to question the opening claim. Couldn't a self-interested person consent to a government because living under that government serves their interests? But the passage gives us the implication as a premise: exclusive self-interest makes government by consent impossible. For this question, accept that starting point and inspect what the author does with it.
The author also supplies the link to democracy: without government by consent, democracy is impossible. So the stated implications connect exclusive self-interest with democracy being impossible. The problem is the next step, which tells us what the theorists believe.
Someone can hold a view without recognizing all its implications. These theorists might believe people are exclusively self-interested while failing to see, or disagreeing with, the connection the author draws to government by consent. A consequence can follow from a belief without being another belief its holder actually has.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, keep our attention on that final verb: believe. The author hasn't shown that the theorists have followed this chain to the conclusion that pursuing democracy is futile.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The known belief is that people care exclusively about their own interests. The author treats the impossibility of democracy as an implication of that belief, then assumes the theorists believe that implication too. They might never have considered it. Showing what their view implies isn't enough to establish what is in their minds.
- B
A group-to-individual error would sound like, “The electorate chose this candidate, so every voter chose this candidate.” Here the author isn't taking a collective property and assigning it to each theorist. The move is from one belief held by the theorists to another belief they supposedly hold.
- C
This describes the opposite move: assigning to a group as a whole something true of each member. We aren't given facts about individual theorists and then combining them into a claim about a group's collective character. Again, the unsupported step concerns the implications people recognize, not combining individual properties.
- D
The author doesn't attack the theorists' character, motives, or credibility to reject their view. The argument tries to identify another belief they must hold. There is no personal attack doing the work here.
- E
The author doesn't reject premises merely because a conclusion is false. Nor does the argument conclude that the self-interest view is false. It accepts stated connections and uses them to attribute a belief to some theorists. E describes a different mistake about evaluating an argument's truth.
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