Logical reasoning PrepTest 106 · Section 2 · Question 12

Flawed/Flawed

Principle Questions / Strengthen with Sufficient Premise Questions

George - Hit his parrot to stop it from chewing on furniture. Now it’s afraid of hands and bites. Chewing furniture didn’t hurt the bird. Judgment - George shouldn’t have hit his bird. Carla - Hit her puppy when it ran into the street. Now the puppy goes into the street only with Carla. Judgment - Carla should have hit the puppy.

This Principle (Strengthen) question is interesting in that it has two situations that the correct answer needs to justify. And these two situations reach opposite judgments - one saying that hitting a pet wasn’t justified, and another saying that it was. As such, we need to make sure that the answer can justify both actions. So since the two situations call for different judgments, let’s find out what differences there are that can justify those different judgments. In both cases, the person hit their pet, and in both cases it was to discipline the pet. And in both cases, it changed the pet’s behavior. Those are all similarities. In George’s case, he disciplined the parrot for something that couldn’t hurt the bird, but in Carla’s case, she disciplined her puppy for something that could have hurt it. And in George’s case, the discipline caused negative behavior to develop - the bird started biting hands. Either of these details could justify the different outcomes, though it’d be hard to predict that the parrot would develop a nervous biting habit beforehand, so the other detail is more likely to lead to the correct answer. So let’s look for a principle stating that physical discipline should be used to train a pet only when the behavior being disciplined could result in harm to the animal.