Self-study
Support Anyone believing that no individual can have an effect on society's future will as a result feel too helpless to act to change society for the better. █████ ██████ ███ █████ ██ ███████ ███████ ██████ ██████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ██████████ ████████ ██ ████ ██████████ ██████ ████ ███████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███████
Summary
The author concludes that if you want to improve society, then you shouldn’t believe that people can’t change society. Why? If someone has this belief, they will feel too helpless to make societal change.
Notable Assumptions
This argument features a conditional conclusion and a single conditional statement as a premise. We can translate them both as follows:
Premise: If you believe that people can’t change society, then you will feel helpless to change it.
Conclusion: If you want to improve society, then you shouldn’t believe people can’t change it.
This argument features a classic link assumption and assumes that those who feel helpless to change society will not want to improve it. Our right answer choice must link these two ideas. We’ll take the contrapositive of the conclusion to make things easier to understand, and diagram it as follows:
9.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ ██████ ████ █████ ██ ███████ ███ █████████
a
Anyone who believes ████ ███████████ ███ ████ ██ ██████ ██ █████████ ██████ ██████ ███ ██ ██████ ███████ ███ ███ ███████
Irrelevant. The conclusion brings up the new variable of wanting to improve society, and this must be expressed in the answer choices.
b
No one who ███████ ███ ██████ ████ █████████ ██████ ████ ██ ██████████ ██ ████ ██████████ ██████ ██████ ███████ ████ ███████████ ██████ ████ ██ ██████ ██ ███
Irrelevant. The conclusion brings up the new variable of wanting to improve society, and this must be expressed in the answer choices.
c
Anyone who feels ███ ████████ ██ ███ ██ ██████ ███████ ███ ███ ██████ ██████ ██████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ██████████ ██ ████ ██████████ ██████ ████ ███████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███████
Irrelevant. The conclusion brings up the new variable of wanting to improve society, and this must be expressed in the answer choices.
d
No one who █████ ██ ███████ ███████ ██████ ██████ ███ ██████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ██ ██████ ███████ ███ ███ ███████
(D) translates to—if you want to improve society, then you shouldn’t feel helpless to change it. This is the contrapositive of our prediction, so (D) justifies our conclusion.
e
Each individual should ███ ██ ███████ ███████ ██ ███████████ ██ ███████ ████ █████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ████ ██████████ ███████
(E) talks about acting to improve society, whereas the stimulus only talks about wanting to improve society. There is a distinction between what someone wants to do and what they actually do, so (E) doesn’t help prove our conclusion.