Logical reasoning PrepTest 136 · Section 2 · Question 20

Incorrect. Neither speaker talks about actions being possible or impossible, so this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. This answer is a bit of a negation of Daniel's statement, so we don't know if he'd agree or disagree with it. He only talks about what is true of actions that are not performed with the right motivations.

Incorrect. This answer connects motive with outcome, and neither speaker does that.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument/Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed/Flawed

Question Type:
Point at Issue

Stimulus Summary:
D: Duty obliges us to do some stuff despite the consequences, but not Right motivations → not Morally good, so filling a moral obligation isn't enough to make an action morally good.

C: We can't control our motivations, so for an action to be good it just needs to fill a moral obligation.

Answer Anticipation:
Just understanding the language here is going to be tough enough! It's very convoluted.

That said, Carrie's argument is significantly more straightforward than Daniel's, and she doesn't start her statement by directly calling back to his (e.g., "I disagree."). So let's start with her argument and see what overlaps with Daniel's and allows for a disagreement.

She starts by talking about the motivations for actions, and Daniel also discusses that. Carrie says that motivations aren't under an individual's conscious control; Daniel says that the right motivations are required for an action to be morally good. Those statements don't necessarily disagree—one could believe that good motivations are necessary for an action to be morally good, but that good motivations aren't under one's control. (This would imply that you can't intentionally perform a good act, but that could be true!)

Carrie's next statement is that the only thing necessary for an action to be good is to fulfill a moral obligation. So the only necessary condition for a good action is fulfilling an obligation. This creates two points of overlap with Daniel's statement. First, Daniel discusses a moral obligation, but he brings it up as something driving some actions—he doesn't relate it to something being good. Second, Daniel brings up a requirement for an action to be morally good—and we just discussed it in the last paragraph! He states that having good motivations is a requirement for an action to be good.

And that highlights the point at issue between the two here—Carrie believes that fulfilling a moral obligation is sufficient for an action to be good, whereas Daniel believes the right motives are.

Answer Explanation:
Daniel believes the right motives are a requirement for an action to be morally good, so he'd agree that not having the right motives would prevent an action from being good. Carrie, on the other hand, believes that all that's required for an action to be morally good is that it fulfills a moral obligation—so if it does that but has the wrong motives, it can still be good. She'd disagree with this answer. This is the point at issue between the two!

Key Takeaway:
Especially when the arguments are convoluted and hard to understand, start with the easier one. The second statement is frequently going to have less to it, and when it doesn't start with a callback to the first argument, you can hop in with your analysis there and work backwards.

Incorrect. This answer conflates the two statements of what's required for an action to be morally good—bringing together Daniel's discussion of motivations with Carrie's discussion of fulfilling moral duties. As such, it's not really a statement that either would agree with.