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#23607
Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen-PR. The correct answer choice is (B)

Marianne is a professional chess player who hums, disrupting the other players. She is ordered to stop humming or be disqualified, but she argues that she is unaware of her humming, so it must be involuntary and therefore should not be held responsible for it, and concludes by means of protesting the order.

Hopefully, Marianne's chess play is less dependent upon the distraction of her opponents than is her apparent reasoning on the credulity of the officials.

Marianne presumes that awareness and voluntary action are factors in responsibility, and you are asked to find the principle that supports her argument.

Answer choice (A): This choice would merely provide for Marianne's opponents to return the favor, but would not justify Marianne's assertion that she should not be held accountable for her actions. This choice is wrong.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct choice. If only voluntary actions are grounds for disqualification ("DQ→Voluntary Actions"), that means that involuntary actions should not bring disqualification. That does not prove Marianne's argument, because it is possible that her lack of current awareness does not prove that she is acting involuntarily, but it does provide support for her presumption that whether an action is voluntary is a factor in accountability.

Answer choice (C): If a person should be held accountable for involuntary actions that serve a person's interest, that makes it highly likely that Marianne's argument is unconvincing. This choice would undermine Marianne, so this choice is wrong.

Answer choice (D): The idea that normally involuntary behavior should be presumed voluntary at a professional chess match serves to invalidate Marianne's assertion that she should not be held responsible for her humming, so this choice is wrong. With this principle, we might normally accept that random humming is involuntary, but might not make that consideration in a chess match.

Answer choice (E): This choice does not clearly attack Marianne, because you do not know that she is actually attempting to distract her opponents. However, it does not support her, either, since it provides sufficient grounds for disqualifying people, but Marianne wants sufficient grounds for ruling out her humming as something for which she can be disqualified.

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