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 lday4
  • Posts: 44
  • Joined: May 05, 2016
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#25745
Can you explain why D is incorrect? Does it also support the stimulus but not as strongly as E?

Thanks!
 Nikki Siclunov
PowerScore Staff
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#25791
Hi lday4,

Answer choice (D) is SO close. But, (E) is better :) Here's why:

The argument boils down to this:
  • Premise: Well-intentioned attempts to resolve marital problems do not always result in success.
    Conclusion: Well-intentioned attempts to resolve marital problems are unjustified.
To strengthen this line of reasoning, we'd ideally want to show that only actions that result in success are justified:
  • ..... ..... Success :arrow: Justified
    Contrapositive: Justified :arrow: Success
This is basically what answer choice (E) states: it provides a strong, definitive statement positing the successful outcome as a necessary condition for justifying well-intentioned actions.

Why is answer choice (D) incorrect?

Well, just because your intentions are irrelevant doesn't mean that your well-intentioned but unsuccessful action is unjustified. The author is probably going to agree with (D), but our job is not to identify an answer choice that must be true, but rather an answer choice that, if true, would most strongly support the conclusion. Even if answer choice (D) is true, it is still possible that a lousy attempt to fix someone else's marital problem is justified for some reason having nothing to do with either the intended or the actual result of this action. Maybe attempting to save other people's marital problems is an ethical or a religious imperative that trumps all other considerations, including the ultimate failure of these attempts to come to fruition.

Does that make sense? Let me know.

Thanks,
 lday4
  • Posts: 44
  • Joined: May 05, 2016
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#25793
Makes sense, thank you!
 mokkyukkyu
  • Posts: 97
  • Joined: Aug 17, 2016
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#28748
Hi, So just wanna double check...
Here, the author uses "ineffectual" to show it was not successful right?

Sometimes I'm not sure when term changes are allowed...
 Nikki Siclunov
PowerScore Staff
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#29156
Correct. The two terms are used synonymously.
 gcs4v333
  • Posts: 19
  • Joined: Oct 09, 2018
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#59490
Why I chose (D) as opposed to (E) has to do with the strength of the conclusion, and the force of the answer choices.

The conclusion is: "Thus, even well-intentioned attempts to resolve the martial problems of friends are usually unjustified.

I ruled out (E) because it says: "No actions based on good intentions are justified unless they also result in success.

But that seems too strong for the conclusion. The conclusion of the prompt seems to allow room for unsuccessful attempts to sometimes be justified, while if you follow the principle in (E), those attempts are never ever justified. So I chose (D) out of process of elimination. Am I placing too much weight on the strength of the principle?
 James Finch
PowerScore Staff
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#59581
Hi GCSV,

The key to understanding what the "usually" in the stimulus's conclusion is referring to is to look at the sentence before it: the attempts are "usually ineffectual," leading to those attempts being usually unjustified. What the stimulus is assuming is that attempts that are effective/successful can be justified, but unsuccessful attempts never can--exactly what (E) says, and what helps justify our conclusion.

Hope this clears things up!

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