Self-study
In order to expand its mailing lists for e-mail advertising, the Outdoor Sports Company has been offering its customers financial incentives if they provide the e-mail addresses of their friends. ████████ ████████ ████ ██████████ ██ ██ █████████ ████████ █████████ ███████ ██ ██████████ ██████ ██ ███████ █████ ████████ █████████████ ███ ███████ █████ █████ ████████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ██████████████
Summary
Incentivizing people to share friends’ e-mail addresses is an unethical business practice. Why would it be unethical? Because it asks people to exploit their friendships for monetary gain, which can risk the integrity of those friendships.
Notable Assumptions
The premises give us a negative-sounding consequence of the incentive—namely, the risk of damaging the integrity of personal relationships—but the premises don’t explain why businesses are ethically on the hook for that consequence. The author assumes that if a business incentivizes people to potentially damage their relationships like that, the business is behaving unethically.
To help justify the argument, we want a principle or rule that satisfies this assumption by confirming that yes, encouraging people to risk the integrity of their personal relationships is an unethical thing for businesses to do.
16.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ ██████ ████ █████ ██ ███████ ███ █████████ ██ ███ █████████
a
It is unethical ███ ██████ ██ ███████ █████ ████████ █████████████ ███ ██████ ██ ██ █████ ██ ████ ████ ████████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ██████████████
Leads to the wrong conclusion. This tells us that the people who act on the incentive are themselves being unethical. But the conclusion we need to support is that a business who offers that incentive is the one behaving unethically.
b
If it would ██ █████████ ██ ███ ███████████ ████ ███ ████████ ██ █ ██████████ ████ ████ ██ ██ █████████ ██ ██████ ████ ███████████ ██ ███ █████ ██████
Wrong trigger. The premises don’t suggest that it’s unethical to for businesses to use the e-mail addresses of customers’ friends. In fact, the argument’s problem is that its premises don’t suggest what’s unethical about anything at all.
c
It is an █████████ ████████ ████████ ███ █ ███████ ██ ████████████ ██████ ███ █████████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████████ █████████████ ██ ███ ████
Wrong trigger. The premises don’t suggest that businesses are deliberately aiming to damage the integrity of their customers’ personal relationships. Such damage may simply be an unintended consequence.
d
It is unethical ██ █████████ ██████ ██ ██████ ██ ████████ ████ █████ ██████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ████████ ██████████████
We know that the business practice of offering financial incentives to share friends’ e-mail addresses ends up encouraging people to do something that could damage the integrity of their personal relationships. (D) tells us that this kind of practice is indeed unethical.
e
Providing a friend's ████████ ███████████ ██ █ ███████ ██ ████████ ███ █ █████████ ██████ ████ ██████ █████████ ██████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ████████ ████████████ ████ ████ ███████
This clarifies how risky it is to exploit a personal relationship for profit, but it does nothing to explain why it’s unethical for businesses to ask people to do this. We’re still no closer to reaching the conclusion.