Problem: If Shayna congratulates Daniel on his award, she will misrepresent her true feelings. However, if Shayna does not congratulate Daniel, she will hurt his feelings.
Principle: One should never be insincere about one's feelings, except possibly where one believes that the person with whom one is speaking would prefer kindness to honesty.
The principle gives us a general rule with an escape hatch (the potential exception). The rule: don't be insincere about your feelings. The escape hatch: you might get a pass on insincerity if you believe the person you're talking to would prefer kindness to honesty.
Notice that the escape hatch doesn't say "go ahead and lie." It says the prohibition on insincerity doesn't necessarily apply in that situation.
Now for the problem. Shayna's stuck. Congratulating Daniel means misrepresenting her true feelings (i.e., being insincere). But not congratulating Daniel means hurting his feelings.
The correct answer will apply the principle to the problem to reach a conclusion about what Shayna should do. The key question is whether Shayna believes Daniel prefers kindness to honesty.
Daniel prefers
kindness to honesty
stays shut
don't congratulate
(insincerity is off the table)
If Shayna does not believe Daniel prefers kindness to honesty, the escape hatch stays shut. The rule applies in full force: don't be insincere. Since congratulating him would mean misrepresenting her feelings, she should not congratulate him.
If Shayna does believe Daniel prefers kindness to honesty...then we can't draw any firm conclusion. We can't say that Shayna should lie or that it's acceptable for her to lie. We simply wouldn't know what she should do.
One more detail: the principle cares about what Shayna believes Daniel prefers, not what Daniel actually prefers. Daniel could secretly value honesty above all else, but as long as Shayna doesn't believe he prefers kindness, the rule still applies and she shouldn't congratulate him.
The principle, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning in which one of the following arguments concerning the problem?
If Shayna congratulates Daniel, she will avoid hurting his feelings, so she should congratulate him.
This doesn't tell us whether Shayna believes Daniel prefers kindness to honesty. Without that information, the principle can't generate a conclusion about what she should do.
Daniel might prefer for Shayna to congratulate him—even if insincerely—rather than for her to express her true feelings, and so Shayna would be doing nothing wrong in insincerely congratulating Daniel.
This tells us what Daniel might prefer, but the principle doesn't care about that. It cares about what Shayna believes about Daniel's preference. Since (B) doesn't tell us anything about Shayna's beliefs, we can't apply the principle.
Shayna believes that kindness should be preferred to dishonesty when speaking to others, so she should not tell Daniel her true feelings.
This tells us what Shayna thinks is more appropriate, but that's the wrong question. The principle turns on what Shayna believes about Daniel's preference for kindness over honesty. What Shayna herself thinks is appropriate is a separate matter entirely.
Daniel's feelings would be hurt if he knew that congratulations from Shayna were insincere, so Shayna should not congratulate him.
This doesn't tell us whether Shayna believes Daniel prefers kindness to honesty, so we still can't apply the principle to reach a conclusion.
Shayna has no opinion about whether Daniel would prefer kindness to honesty, so she should not congratulate him.
Having no opinion about whether Daniel prefers kindness to honesty means Shayna does not actively believe that he does. And if she doesn't believe Daniel prefers kindness to honesty, the escape hatch stays shut: she shouldn't be insincere. So she shouldn't congratulate Daniel. Notice that (E) is the only answer that tells us anything about what Shayna believes regarding Daniel's preference.
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