PrepTest 152, Section 4, Question 14
Max: As evidence mounts showing the terrible changes(51 more words not shown)
Cora's claim that it is(24 more words not shown)
- AIt is used(18 more words not shown)
- BIt is used(18 more words not shown)
- CIt is used(18 more words not shown)
- DIt is used(22 more words not shown)
- EIt is used(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Environmental harm is a reason to question a technology. Is it enough to establish that people must abandon a technological way of life? I'd also want to consider what people would lose by doing that. A recommendation needs more than one side of the trade-off.
Cora takes a different route. She says humans have used technology to change their surroundings for thousands of years, so this is a natural human activity. We might still ask whether a longstanding practice is good merely because it is longstanding. Calling something natural doesn't settle every question about its effects.
What we’re looking for
But the question asks what Cora's claim does in her response. She uses it to challenge Max's recommendation by disputing his contrast between technological living and a natural way of living. Keep her response separate from my earlier question about what people might lose.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Max treats a return to natural living as the alternative to technology's environmental effects. Cora responds that using technology to change the environment is itself natural for humans. Her claim therefore challenges describing the alleged cause of the harm as unnatural. That identifies the particular way she pushes back, whether or not we find it a complete answer to Max.
- B
Benefits to humans would be relevant to the trade-off I initially wondered about, but Cora doesn't give that argument. She points to longstanding technological activity as evidence that it is natural. Being natural and benefiting humans are different claims.
- C
Cora doesn't dispute that technology has caused damaging changes. Her response can accept that harm while challenging the idea that technological activity is unnatural. C also treats the damage claim as Max's conclusion, whereas Max uses the damage to support a recommendation about how humans should live.
- D
Difficulty giving up modern conveniences is another possible objection, but Cora doesn't make it. Her stated reason concerns what counts as natural, not whether people would struggle to change their habits or surrender conveniences.
- E
Saying an activity is natural doesn't establish that its consequences fall outside moral discussion. Cora doesn't claim environmental harm can never raise a moral issue. E replaces her challenge to the natural-versus-technological contrast with a much broader claim.
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