QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption
CONCLUSION: We do not have an obligation to avoid cutting down trees.
REASONING: We can’t be obliged toward something unless it has a right. But trees don’t have rights. So we don’t owe them any obligation.
ANALYSIS: The editorialist assumes that trees can’t have rights. That cannot be the correct answer; we need another assumption.
We need to eliminate the possibility that we have an obligation not to cut down trees, owed to someone else or to something which isn’t a tree.
___________
- This isn’t a required assumption. The editorialist is discussing objects which don’t have rights (trees).
- This negation technique shows this is not the right answer: “Some entities with rights have no obligations.” The answer does nothing to harm the editorialist’s argument, so it cannot be correct.
- The editorialist only needs to assume trees don’t have rights, not that only conscious things can have them. (A government or a corporation can have rights, and they aren’t conscious.)
- CORRECT. Negate this and you get: “Avoiding cutting down trees is an obligation owed to some entity other than trees.” That would make his argument false, and so the assumption is required.
- This is neither here nor there. The stimulus discusses whether we have an obligation not to cut down trees, not under what circumstances we have a right to do so.
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