LSAT 118 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: For each action we perform, we can only know some of its …

QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption

CONCLUSION: If moral rightness depends on the best consequences of your actions, we could never know what’s morally right.

REASONING: We only know some consequences of our actions.

ANALYSIS: There’s a gap between the reasoning and the conclusion. Why does knowing only some consequences prevent us from knowing which action has the best consequences?

Suppose your mom asked you to pick up your sibling from school. You’re deciding whether you should do what she asked, or if you should ignore it and go hang out with friends again.

You might not know every consequence of each decision. If you don’t go, maybe your mom will have to leave work and get fired, maybe your sibling will be in danger, etc. If you go hang out with your friends, maybe you’ll have the best time of your life or meet your significant other – who knows?

We obviously don’t know every possible consequence of all of our decisions. But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure out which one would likely have the best consequences.

I think most of us would agree that picking up your sibling would have the best consequences.

So the missing idea here is: To know that an action has the best consequences, you would need to know all of its consequences.

Then the argument works:

• We know only some consequences.
• But knowing an action has the best consequences requires knowing all of them.
• Therefore, we can never know which action has the best consequences.
• If moral rightness = having the best consequences, then we can never know what action is morally right.

___________

1. This says we can sometimes know an action is morally wrong. The argument is about whether we can know what action is morally right.
2. This undermines the conclusion. The conclusion says we can never know what is morally right. B says that on some occasions we can know.
3. CORRECT. Since we know only some consequences, we could never know which action has the best consequences. The conclusion follows logically if we add this.
4. This changes the theory entirely. If only immediate consequences mattered, then perhaps we could know all the relevant consequences.
5. Whether moral rightness varies from person to person has nothing to do with whether we can know which action has the best consequences.