#23 - Columnist: Although most people favor the bill and the

[lanereuden]

Wait about B,

If I contrapose B, then I get:

If any bill that is opposed by influential people but favored by most others is not passed into law eventually, then the democracy is not well functioning

Which aligns with the stimulus and conclusion therein
Why is this thinking wrong?

[ShannonOh22]

I eliminated E right away due to the word "promptly". There is nothing in the stimulus that says a bill would need to pass "promptly" - it merely says this particular bill won't be passed for a number of years, if ever, because it adversely affects influential members of society. The speed with which a bill is passed does not seem to be the central issue here - it is instead the fact that the bill CAN or WILL pass at all, despite opposition by influential members of society. Speaking of which, E does not mention "very influential" society members at all...which is one of the critical points of the argument isn't it?

I chose B, and I can see why it is incorrect given the absence of any mention of "basic human rights", but if the absence of that element is enough to take B out of the running, why wouldn't E's lack of any mention of "influential people" also deem it incorrect?

Thanks in advance for your help/clarification!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Lane and Shannon,

Lane, the problem with answer choice B is that the contrapositive requires us to know, from the premises, that influential people oppose the bill. The stimulus doesn't provide quite that level of evidence. It says that influential people will be adversely affected. But it doesn't tell us for sure that they oppose the bill. Thus, I can't be sure the rule in answer choice B applies to the scenario in the stimulus.

Shannon, the assistance answer choice E provides to the stimulus reasoning is easier to see if you consider the contrapositive of answer choice E. As stated, answer choice E's structure is, "IF a democracy is well-functioning, THEN a bill that does not violate anyone's basic human rights and that most people favor will be passed promptly into law." The contrapositive of answer choice E (more directly applicable to the facts and structure of the stimulus) is "IF a bill that does not violate anyone's basic human rights and that most people favor is not passed promptly into law, THEN the democracy is not well-functioning." Notice all the elements of the "if" condition of the contrapositive are satisfied in the premises of the stimulus argument, which is exactly what we want from our principle in a Strengthen-Principle question! The premises tell us the bill doesn't violate anyone's basic human rights, is favored by most people, but will not be passed promptly into law (because it will not be passed for many years). Thus, the sufficient condition of the contrapositive of answer choice E is satisfied by the premises of the argument. Since the argument satisfies that sufficient condition, the necessary condition applies as well, and the democracy can be concluded not to be well-functioning.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[blade21cn]

Think I analyzed the stimulus incorrectly from the start. I thought "although" is an indicator of opposing/counter-premise, which should not be counted as premise. Therefore, the sole premise/reason of the intermediate conclusion that "the bill will not be passed for many year, if at all" is: "people, who would be adversely affected, were it to become law, are very influential." It will be odd to say that the premise/reason for the bill not passing is "most people favor the bill" or "the bill does not violate anyone's basic human rights."

Then, the final conclusion is that this whole situation signifies that the country is not a well-functioning democracy. So the my analysis of the stimulus is: (influential people adversely affected → bill not passed) → NOT well-functioning democracy. Apparently, the correct answer choice comes from a different read of the stimulus: (most people favor the bill + the bill does not violet basic human rights → bill not passed) → NOT well-functioning democracy.

So is my reading at least valid, albeit it did not bear fruit in terms of aligning with any of the answer choices? Also, which part of the stimulus indicates that the "although" piece is actually the premise of the argument? Thanks!

[sseyedali]

Hi there, I just wanted to clarify my understanding of nested conditionals (using this example).


If we have the following....

(1) Bill favored by most people

AND (3) [well-functioning democracy promptly passed into law]

(2) Bill does not violate HR

...how does the conclusion in the stimulus actually follow from the premises in the argument? Is it because the stimulus tells us that ~(promptly passed into law), and with that and answer choice E) we can infer that ~(Well-functioning democracy)? Just a simple contrapositive relationship. That's my intuition but I just want to be sure. In words: "If a bill is favored by most people and the bill does not violate HR, then IF there is a well-functioning democracy, the law is promptly passed. Since The law is NOT promptly passed, it must be the cause that it is not a well-functioning democracy."

I find it interesting and slightly confusing that when something in the necessary condition fails to take place in a nested conditional (3), the sufficient condition (1) or (2) is not also ruled out. This leads me to a more general question as well if thats okay...

I understand the contrapositive of the nested conditional above as being:


NOT [well-functioning democracy promptly passed into law] NOT Bill favored by most people OR Bill does violate HR

Given this, Im wondering what kind of scenario would exhibit NOT [well-functioning democracy promptly passed into law]. Am I correct that the NOT [promptly passed into law] does not by itself entail that NOT [well-functioning democracy promptly passed into law]?

Would we instead need something like:

(*) NOT [promptly passed into law] AND [Well-functioning democracy]


I'm having a little bit of a hard time articulating this second question so apologies in advance.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi blade and sseyedali,

First, blade, although doesn't indicate a counter-premise. It can, but it needs more. We need to know that there's an opposing premise/view that it's indicating, which is not the case here. You may have seen it with a counter-premise/conclusion in phrases like "although some people would do x, I propose Y." In this case though, it's just showing a situation that is unexpected.

sseyedali, the contrapositive here is tricky, so I completely understand your confusion. We need to negate the entirety of necessary condition. The contrapositive of the relationship would read something like this

If, in a well functioning democracy a bill would not be promptly passed into law, then either that bill is not supported by most people OR that bill would violate human rights.

Tricky thing here is that our necessary condition is itself a conditional. What does that mean for a negation? How do you negate a conditional?

Let's look at an easier example of a conditional.

If it snows, I will not go outside. snow outside

What's the negation? A lot of students would want to take the contrapositive. But the contrapositive is not the negation---it's the logical equivalent. The negation of a conditional is keeping the sufficient the same, but negating the necessary. Our negated snow example would look like this:

If it snows, I will go outside. snow outside.

Can you see where that's the logical opposite? The same scenario occurs, but the outcome is the opposite. That's why we have to negate the necessary part of the nested conditional, but leave the sufficient the same.

(well functioning democracy bill promptly passed into law) bill supported by most people OR Bill violates human rights.

Hope that helps!

[lemonade42]

Hello
I'm confused by how (C) "does not discuss what failure to pass the bill implies regarding the state of democracy in the country." Why would it have to discuss the failure to pass the bill?

[Dana D]

Hey Lemonade,

The author here is saying this country is not a well-functioning democracy solely based on the premise of the first sentence - there is a bill that most people favor and that doesn't violate anyone's basic human rights that won't be passed for many years.

In order for this bold claim to make sense, we need to link the idea that not passing a bill that most people favor which doesn't violate human rights and the concept of a well-functioning democracy.

If we added in answer choice (C) to the stimulus, we get the additional information that in a well-functioning democracy, a bill favored by most will become law only if those who oppose it are not influential. Ok - but in the case of the bill we are discussing here, the people who oppose it are very influential. So maybe we're in a well-functioning democracy, but the people who oppose the bill are just very influential. We still don't know if we can draw the same conclusion as the columnist and say we're not in a well-functioning democracy.

Answer choice (E) adds this needed information - in a well-functioning democracy if a bill that most people favor and doesn't violate anyone's basic rights is passed promptly.

Well we have a bill that fits both these criteria - and yet it won't get passed for many years. How can that be? Because we aren't in a well-functioning democracy.