PrepTest 149, Section 3, Question 3
Many employers treat their employees fairly.(19 more words not shown)
The argument requires the assumption(1 more words not shown)
- Asome employers act(13 more words not shown)
- Bno employers who(12 more words not shown)
- Csome or all(11 more words not shown)
- Dmaking a profit(11 more words not shown)
- Eit is not(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Is employing someone an example of using them for your own purposes? That seems plausible: an employer might hire people to help the business succeed. But the argument hasn't actually supplied that connection.
We also need to be careful about 'fairly.' Fair treatment doesn't automatically settle whether someone is harmed or whether every aspect of the arrangement is morally acceptable. Two people might receive equally fair treatment while both still face difficult or harmful working conditions.
What we’re looking for
So I see two links to check: employment must count as using others toward one's own ends, and the fair-treatment examples must support the claim that this needn't be reprehensible or harmful. For a required assumption, we're looking for something this argument needs along the way. An answer doesn't have to repair both gaps on its own.
Working the answers
- A
This restricts when some employers can act reprehensibly: only when they harm their employees. We don't need that restriction. Those employers could behave badly in other parts of life while still supplying examples of fair treatment at work. The conclusion doesn't attempt to classify every morally bad act an employer could commit.
- B
This points away from the example the author needs. It says no morally acting employers use their employees as a means to their own ends. But the argument wants fair employment to show that using people can sometimes be morally acceptable. Excluding moral employers from the relevant activity doesn't provide that connection.
- CCorrect
Some employers must actually use their employees as a means to their own ends. Otherwise, fair employment wouldn't even be an example of the activity the conclusion discusses. If no employer used employees for that purpose, facts about employers' fairness couldn't support this claim about using people. C supplies a necessary starting connection. It doesn't assert that every employer does this, or settle the separate question of how fair treatment bears on harm and morality.
- D
'Never harmful' goes well beyond 'not always harmful.' The author can allow harmful cases while arguing that other cases are acceptable. For example, profiting from someone's work in dangerous conditions might harm that worker. That wouldn't rule out a different employment arrangement being fair and harmless. We don't need all profit from other people's labor to be harmless.
- E
The argument doesn't need to explain every way one person can harm another. There could be harmful acts that don't involve treating someone as a tool for one's purposes, and the claim about acceptable employment could still hold. E makes using people a requirement for all harm, a connection the conclusion doesn't need.
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