QUESTION TEXT: Lawyer: In a risky surgical procedure that…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify
CONCLUSION: If the patient dies, the doctors will have committed manslaughter.
REASONING: In a risky procedure, the doctor’s will stop a patient’s heart and brain.
ANALYSIS: On principle justify questions, you simply have to connect the facts with the moral conclusion. Here, we have a fact, and a moral conclusion.
- Fact: Stopped bodily functions through decrease in body temperature.
- Moral Conclusion: If patient dies, medical team guilty of manslaughter.
You just need a conditional statement that combines them together:
Stopped bodily functions AND patient dies —> guilty of manslaughter
It might seem like you’re repeating yourself, but you’re not. The conditional statement is what lets us move from the facts to the conclusion.
___________
- This answer says the team “could” be charged with manslaughter. We’re looking for an answer that says they are guilty of manslaughter.
- This gives a necessary condition for being guilty of manslaughter. We’re looking for a sufficient condition for being guilty of manslaughter.
E.g. This says “Manslaughter —> X”, but we need to find “X —> Manslaughter”. - Same as B. We need a sufficient condition for being guilty of manslaughter.
- CORRECT. This works. We know that if the patient dies, then the cessation is permanent. This answer says “permanent —> manslaughter”.
- This gives us a way that something is not manslaughter. We’re looking to prove something is manslaughter.
E.g. If I say “You’ll starve unless you make it out of the desert”, then I’m showing a way that you won’t starve. The statement doesn’t prove starvation.
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