PTB.S4.Q24 - If an external force intervenes

saigopini.panneerselvam

PrepTest B - Section 4 - Question 24

Hi! I wasn't sure why E was the answer over C. #help please!

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rzee0913

Hello, my understanding of this problem is as follows:

Since this is a PSAr question, we first need to identify an existing 'gap' between the premise and the main conclusion. The stimulus states that if external forces intervene to give a community freedom, then that community will fail to be truly free (conclusion), since it is through people's own efforts to become free where the political virtues necessary for remaining truly free have the best chance of arising (premise). Here we can identify a 'gap' between the premise and the conclusion, which is the assumption that giving the political virtues the best chance to arise (through a community's self efforts) is necessary for a community to remain truly free. The contrapositive of this principle is 'if the political virtues are not given the best chance to arise, then a community will fail to remain truly free.'

With this pre-phrase in mind, C matches closest to this idea because its direct translation is if a community does not develop certain political virtues, then it will not remain truly free ('without' is a group 3 indicator, so we take either element, negate it and make it the sufficient condition.) On the other hand, E does not do the job primarily because of the terms 'should not' - whether an external should or should not impose freedom of a community doesn't give any input on whether such attempts can/cannot succeed. E is more a normative statement that doesn't match the assumption that 'if political virtues are not developed (through self-efforts), then the community will fail to be truly free'.

Think about it this way - even if real freedom should not be imposed on by external forces, there still remains the possibility that they do so anyways and real freedom is still brought to the community. C on the other hand rules out this possibility because it posits that for a community to remain truly free, it is necessary that certain political virtues are developed first. This is an objective statement that describes how real phenomena can/cannot arise, instead of a normative judgement on what is/isn't desirable.

kennmh20

Conclusion: you are not able to truly remain free if it is the case that an external force aids you in your pursuit of political freedom
Premise: Because when an outside force comes to your aid, you (assuming you is a member of this hypothetical society we are talking about and is representative of all people in this society) do not gain certain virtues necessary to maintain freedom.
Pre-Phrase: Something along the lines of "you are not able to get certain virtues without doing something yourself"
A: In my mind this was going directly against what the stimulus was saying.
B: Does it matter whether it is the first political virtue or not--> Plus, we do not even necessarily know what virtues the stimulus is talking about, and thus self-determination may not even be relevant, but we instead assume that it is
C: "A community cannot remain free...w/o first developing virtues" --> Translates to if /certain virtues-->/freedom. This is the principle being presented. The conclusion is that you are not able to remain free. Why? Because an outside actor helped, and you thus you do not get certain virtues. Thus, if you do not have certain virtues, then you cannot remain free
Similar to B--> We only know that certain virtues are required to maintain freedom, not that the virtue in question is self-determination.
E: E is prescriptive, and I did not take the principle to be prescriptive

This was my take on the question...I hope it helpes