QUESTION TEXT: Essayist: The existence of a moral order…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: If ours souls are immortal then the bad will be punished.
REASONING: All moral order punish the bad, eventually. Moral orders depend on the soul being immortal.
ANALYSIS: This confuses sufficient and necessary. We know that if there is a moral order, then souls are immortal (M➞ S).
We don’t know that if souls are immortal then there is a moral order (S ➞ M). That’s backwards.
___________
- CORRECT. See the analysis above. Souls are a necessary condition for a moral order, but they aren’t a sufficient condition. But there might not be a moral order, even if the souls are immortal.
- The argument didn’t say that moral orders did exist. They said if the soul was immortal, then moral order existed.
- This describes the flaw in reverse. It says the premise was “Immortal Soul ➞ Moral Order”, when really the premised was “M ➞ S”.
- The first sentence says that all moral orders punish the bad, whatever other differences they might have.
- This isn’t a circular argument. The conclusion is different from the premises.
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