Logical reasoning PrepTest 142 · Section 2 · Question 24

Incorrect. There are a lot of terms here that aren't in the original argument (moral disapproval; moral themes), so this answer is out of scope.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
If you have ambiguous moral beliefs, you're unlikely to view history through a moral lens.
As history knowledge goes up, inclination to judge people goes down.
Therefore: The more historical knowledge, the less likely to view history through a moral lens.

Answer Anticipation:
This argument is messy. It's got statements that use conditional language mixed with less certainty (that first statement, which uses "unless" but also "unlikely"). It's got trends. But what it has that we're going to use to make sense of all of this is repeated terms that we can start to draw connections between. And when it's hard to track the argument for whatever reason, you should start with the conclusion and build from there.

The conclusion starts by talking about having more historical knowledge. This term shows up in the second premise, and it establishes that this person's inclination to judge people is lower. However, there's no premise about having a lower inclination to judge people, so we're done building from the first term in the conclusion:

The more historical knowledge one has, the less their inclination to judge others.

Now to build to the other term in the conclusion. What builds to someone being less likely to view history through a moral lens? That person not having unambiguous moral beliefs (which we'll rephrase as having ambiguous moral beliefs to get rid of the double negative). Nothing builds to having ambiguous moral beliefs, so we're done building our chain to the end of the conclusion:

Ambiguous moral beliefs make one less likely to view history through a moral lens.

If you'll note, we essentially just rewrote the two premises—but that's fine, because we did so by contextualizing them with the conclusion. We can see now that the gap between the argument—the one preventing the conclusion from being validly drawn—is between those two premises. So the correct answer should connect them:

The less one's inclination to judge others, the more likely they are to have ambiguous moral beliefs.

If you plug this premise in between our two rephrases written out here, you can see that it allows them to be connected together, resulting in the conclusion being validly drawn.

Answer Explanation:
This answer choice (with some double negatives thrown in for good measure) reflects our anticipation. If a lower inclination to judge people isn't correlated with a lower likelihood of unambiguous moral beliefs, then the premises can't be connected and the argument falls apart.

Key Takeaway:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions frequently feature nonconditional arguments that still build chain-like connections between premises. However, they can be difficult to track because of convoluted, abstract, and uncertain language. Start with the conclusion, build from the starting term and to the ending term, and see what connection is missing from the argument. And remember that, with the uncertain language, you should be looking for an answer that matches that weaker language—anything stronger is likely to be unnecessary.

Incorrect. That "[o]nly" is stronger than the statements in the premise, where most of the connections were relative (higher/lower, more likely/less likely). In Strengthen with Necessary Premise questions, the correct answer will very rarely be stronger than the statements and conclusion. Additionally, there are some term shifts between the stimulus and this answer (understanding history vs. knowledge of history; moral significance vs. working out moral themes). Both are reason enough to eliminate this answer.

Incorrect. This answer is the inversion of the relationship in the first premise. As such, it's adding to something we already know, not building a connection needed for the argument to work.

Incorrect. Objectivity isn't mentioned in the stimulus, nor is it relevant, so it's out of scope.