SDCAR2010【逻辑入门】(十二)Principles
The passage will often give you a set of facts or state a principle. A principle is a rule or generalization. The trick here is figuring out which “rule” best applies to the set of acts or vice versa.
• Fact: You lost your shirt at the laundromat.
• Rule A: You are responsible for clothes you intentionally lose.
• Rule B: You are responsible for everything you legally own.
• Even though Rule B is more general, it is more likely to apply here because you probably did not lose your shirt intentionally. To tackle principle questions, you must forget the details or facts specific to the question; and try to focus on the rule underlying the argument in the stimulus.
Principle questions overlap with other question types, especially strengthen questions. Depending on the specific question, it usually helps to ask yourself:
• Does the rule apply to the facts?
• Does it strengthen or weaken the argument?
Principle strengthen
Prompts for principle strengthen
• Which one of the following principles underlies the arbitrator’s argument?
• Which one of the following principles most strongly supports the argument above?
• Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the critic’s reasoning?
Examples:
1) Professor Chan: The literature department’s undergraduate courses should cover only true literary works, and not such frivolous material as advertisements.
Professor Wigmore: Advertisements might or might not be true literary works but they do have a powerfully detrimental effect on society—largely because people cannot discern their real messages. The literature department’s courses give students the critical skills to analyze and understand texts. Therefore, it is the literature department’s responsibility to include the study of advertisements in its undergraduate courses.
Which one of the following principles most strongly supports Professor Wigmore’s argument?
(A) Advertisements ought to be framed in such a way that their real messages are immediately clear.
(B) Any text that is subtly constructed and capable of affecting people’s thought and action ought to be considered a form of literature.
(C) All undergraduate students ought to take at least one course that focuses on the development of critical skills.
(D) The literature department’s courses ought to enable students to analyze and understand any text that could have a harmful effect on society.
(E) Any professor teaching an undergraduate course in the literature department ought to be free to choose the material to be covered in that course.
2) Ethicist: In a recent judicial decision, a contractor was ordered to make restitution to a company because of a bungled construction job, even though the company had signed a written agreement prior to entering into the contract that the contractor would not be financially liable should the task not be adequately performed. Thus, it was morally wrong for the company to change its mind and seek restitution.
Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the ethicist’s reasoning?
(A) It is morally wrong for one party not to abide by its part of an agreement only if the other party abides by its part of the agreement.
(B) It is morally wrong to seek a penalty for an action for which the agent is unable to make restitution.
(C) It is morally wrong for one person to seek to penalize another person for an action that the first person induced the other person to perform.
(D) It is morally wrong to ignore the terms of an agreement that was freely undertaken only if there is clear evidence that the agreement was legally permissible.
(E) It is morally wrong to seek compensation for an action performed in the context of a promise to forgo such compensation.
