Support Young people believe efforts to reduce pollution, poverty, and war are doomed to failure. Support This pessimism is probably harmful to humanity's future, because Support people lose motivation to work for goals they think are unrealizable. Support We must do what we can to prevent this loss of motivation and therefore Conclusion must enable our children to believe that better futures are possible.
The author concludes that we must enable our children to believe that better futures are possible.
Why?
Because young people are pessimistic about the future, and this pessimism makes people lose motivation to work for goals they think are unrealizable. In addition, we need to prevent this loss of motivation.
The author assumes that enabling children to believe that better futures are possible can help prevent the loss of motivation.
The author also assumes that there’s no other way to prevent the loss of motivation besides enabling children to believe that better futures are possible.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
Motivating people to work to solve humanity's problems will enable them to believe that the future can be better and will cause them to be less pessimistic.
This reverses something the author assumes. The author assumes that enabling children to believe in a better future will help motivate people to work to solve humanity’s problems. But (A) asserts that motivating people to help solve humanity’s problems will enable belief in a better future. That’s not necessary, because even if the motivation doesn’t help people believe in a better future, it can still be the case that enabling the belief in a better future increases motivation to solve problems.
Enabling people to believe that better futures are possible will help prevent the loss of motivation that results from pessimistic beliefs about the future.
Necessary, because if this were not true — if enabling people to believe better futures are possible will NOT help prevent the loss of motivation that results from pessimism — then we have no reason to think that we “must enable our children to believe that better futures are possible.” Why must we do something that won’t help? The author needs to assume that the solution he advocates for will be helpful.
Optimism about the future is better than pessimism, even if that optimism is based on an illusory vision of what is likely to occur.
Not necessary, because whether a particular attitude is in general “better” than another is not at issue. What matters is whether enabling children to think that better futures are possible will help prevent a loss of motivation to solve humanity’s problems. In addition, we don’t know the author’s opinion about how a particular attitude being “illusory” relates to the argument.
If future generations believe that the future can be better, then pollution, poverty, and war will be eliminated.
Not necessary, because the author does not have to think that humanity’s problems will be “eliminated.” The author can believe that a belief in a better future will motivate others to work toward solutions to humanity’s problems, even if those problems will never be completely gone.
The current prevalence of such problems as pollution and poverty stems from previous generations' inability to believe that futures can be better.
Not necessary, because the argument doesn’t rely on any views about the cause of humanity’s problems. Although the author does believe that improving people’s motivation to solve humanity’s problems might help solve those problems, that doesn’t imply a belief about the original cause of those problems.
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