PrepTest 140, Section 1, Question 21
Lawyer: If you take something that you have(44 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the lawyer's(7 more words not shown)
- Aconfuses a factual(5 more words not shown)
- Btakes for granted(21 more words not shown)
- Ctakes a condition(22 more words not shown)
- Dfails to consider(8 more words not shown)
- Econcludes that something(22 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Couldn't taking the compost be wrong for some other reason?
The lawyer gives us one way to establish wrongdoing: taking something when you have good reason to think it belongs to someone else counts as stealing, and stealing is wrong. Meyers doesn't meet that description. Fine. That means this rule doesn't establish that Meyers acted wrongly. It doesn't establish that Meyers acted acceptably, either.
Maybe removing the compost would damage the public garden even if Meyers had no reason to think anyone owned it. That's a possible reason to question the action independently of the property issue. We haven't been told that this particular kind of stealing is the only way an action can be wrong.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks us to identify that switch. The argument starts with a condition that is enough to make an action wrong, then treats that condition as something every wrong action must have. Failing one test for wrongdoing doesn't clear the action of every possible objection.
Working the answers
- A
The lawyer uses a factual claim about Meyers's reason to believe something, along with a moral rule about stealing. Using both kinds of statement isn't itself confusing them. The mistake is treating the moral rule as an exhaustive account of wrongdoing.
- B
We don't need to know what Meyers would have done under different beliefs to evaluate this argument. The lawyer describes Meyers's actual lack of good reason and draws a conclusion about the actual action. No claim about how Meyers would behave if he believed the compost belonged to someone else is required.
- CCorrect
The first rule supplies a sufficient condition for wrongdoing: knowingly taking what one has good reason to regard as another person's property. The lawyer treats that condition as necessary, so that its absence supposedly proves there was no wrong. Other reasons the action could be wrong remain unaddressed.
- D
If the compost belonged to Meyers, that might help explain why taking it wasn't theft. It doesn't expose the flaw in moving from failure to meet this theft condition to no wrongdoing at all. Ownership doesn't establish that every way of taking or using one's property is acceptable.
- E
The lawyer never concludes that the compost is certainly someone else's property. The relevant premise says Meyers had no good reason to believe it was. E describes an upgrade from uncertain evidence to certain ownership that doesn't occur here.
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