PrepTest 109

Incorrect. The question isn't whether something has a universal positive effect on happiness, but rather whether that thing increases the balance of happiness by not decreasing someone else's. Since this answer doesn't address the possibility that a thing could make one person happy and another person sad, this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. If a reform makes a few people happy but leaves most other people in the same place, then it succeeded in increasing the overall amount of happiness thus achieving the purpose of good social reform.

Incorrect. If it would affect "only" those people, then it wouldn't affect others, and thus others wouldn't see their happiness go down, increasing the overall balance of happiness.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
Good social reform primary goal - Increase sum total happiness
Intermediate conclusion - Any reform which makes one person happy is successful
This plan - Makes constituents happy
Main point - This plan is good social reform

Answer Anticipation:
This argument starts by establishing a goal of good social reform. It then draws an intermediate conclusion ("So") based on that goal, and then it goes on to use that general conclusion to reach another conclusion that's specifically about a reform proposed by the Parliament member. Since there's an intermediate conclusion here, we need to consider assumptions made heading into both of them.

Let's start with the opening premise/intermediate conclusion. There's a huge hint to the flaw with this portion of the argument in the premise—it discusses the overall ("sum total") amount of happiness. When that happens, there needs to be a discussion of the overall effect of any change. Here, the argument states that a policy that succeeds in increasing one person's happiness achieves its goal. And that's true if all other things remain equal. However, it's possible that the person's happiness comes at the expense of two other people's happiness, or they're made only a little happier while someone else is made miserable. Since the argument doesn't consider the overall balance of happiness, this portion of the argument is flawed, and so any answer that brings up the possibility that one person's happiness can come at the expense of another's would serve to weaken the argument.

But let's ignore that and assume that the intermediate conclusion is valid—and thus we should accept it as true. If making one person happy achieves the goal of good social policy, does that mean the reform that's going to increase a group's happiness also achieve that goal? It does—so there's no gap in the logic here. As such, we're limited to looking for the answer that we already anticipated.

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights the possibility that the Parliament member ignores—that making her constituents happy would make a larger group unhappy, or make a group so unhappy as to more than balance out the increase in happiness for her constituents. If that's the case, then the overall balance of happiness would go down, making her reform bad social reform.

Key Takeaway:
Whenever an argument talks about the "net effect," "sum total," "overall balance," or a similar concept, be sure that any change proposed has both the upside and downside explored. Without showing that there isn't a change that works against what the author is concluding, there's no way to know the net effect.

Incorrect. There's no discussion of the support for the reformers proposal here, so this answer is out of scope.