Logical reasoning PrepTest 101 · Section 2 · Question 23

Question prompt

Essayist: The existence of Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Errors in Reasoning Questions

Stimulus Summary

Moral order (the bad are always punished) → Human souls immortal
Therefore - Human souls immortal → Bad always punished

Answer Anticipation

This Errors in Reasoning question starts with a statement that one thing “depends on” another. That phrase is a necessary condition indicator, so we should start by seeing if there’s a conditional logic flaw.
While there’s a lot of intervening information, the conditional logic flaw anticipation is reinforced when we get to the conclusion, which is a traditional if/then conditional statement.
Taking a look at the conclusion, we can see that the necessary condition of the premise is the sufficient condition of the conclusion (human souls being immortal). The necessary condition of the conclusion may seem at first to be unrelated to the sufficient condition of the premise, but it brings up the definition of that sufficient condition, so it is equivalent to it.
In other words, the conclusion is the reversal of the premise, which means there is a Sufficient/Necessary flaw here (an illegal reversal). We should look for that answer.
Before we head to the answers, however, we should take a second to see if the intervening information we glossed over is relevant to another flaw we should be on the lookout for. However, the two examples are shown to be not particularly tied to the conclusion, as the argument pivots away from them (“But however” - a double pivot!), and so we can feel comfortable looking for only a Sufficient/Necessary flaw in the answer choices.

Answer choices

  1. A
    From the assertion that Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem
    This answer describes an illegal reversal, and it matches up with the stimulus. There is a premise that human souls being immortal is necessary to a moral order (“depends upon”), and from that assertion, it concludes that an immortal soul is sufficient (“if”) for the bad to be punished (which is listed as being inherent to a moral order). This answer is correct.

  2. B
    The argument takes mere Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The individual beliefs brought up are brought up as examples and pivoted away from, so it’s not treating either of them as true. And the conclusion is conditioned on a human soul being immortal (and thus existing), so it’s not assuming that beliefs are true, but rather it conditions its conclusion on them being true.

  3. C
    From the claim that Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    This answer is very tempting! It definitely describes an illegal reversal. However, this answer itself reverses the logic in the argument. There, in the premise, the existence of a moral order was sufficient to show that the human soul is immortal - in other words, a moral order implies that there is an immortal soul. This answer says the premise is the reverse of that.

  4. D
    The argument treats two Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    It doesn’t treat the two presented moral orders as the same - rather, it highlights one aspect of them that they share (the punishment of the bad through their immortal souls).

  5. E
    The argument's conclusion is Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    This answer is essentially a Circular Reasoning answer. However, the argument doesn’t merely restate a conclusion of moral order. Rather, it reverses a relationship between a moral order and an immortal soul.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 61%
  2. B 8%
  3. C 13%
  4. D 6%
  5. E 12%

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