Self-paced
Hospitals, universities, labor unions, and other institutions may well have public purposes and be quite successful at achieving them even though each of their individual staff members does what he or she does only for selfish reasons.
Summary
The individual staff members of hospitals, universities, labor unions, and other institutions do their work only for selfish reasons. However, the institutions themselves can still have public purposes and can achieve these public purposes successfully.
Strongly Supported Conclusions
Whether an institution can successfully achieve its public purpose may not depend on the intentions of that institution’s individual staff members.
An institution can possess a property that its members do not possess.
18.
Which one of the following ███████████████ ██ ████ ███████ ███████████ ██ ███ ████████
a
What is true ██ ████ ██████ █████████████ ██ ███ ███████████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ██████████████
This is unsupported. The stimulus does not compare different kinds of social organizations; it only speaks to those institutions with public purposes.
b
An organization can ████ █ ████████ ████ ███ ███ ██ ███ ███████ ████████
This is strongly supported. We are told that even though the staff members of an institution are selfishly motivated, the institution can have and achieve public purposes. Thus, the institution can have a property (pursuing public purposes) that not all of its members possess.
c
People often claim ██████████ ███████ ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██ ████ ████████
This is unsupported. The stimulus does not tell us whether the staff members, who are selfish, claim to have altruistic motives. It merely tells us that the institution can have altruistic motives even though its members do not.
d
Many social institutions ████ ██████ ████████████ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ███████ █████
This is unsupported. The stimulus tells us nothing about the founders of these institutions or what their original intentions might have been. We only know that the institutions are currently able to have and achieve public purposes.
e
Often an instrument ███████ ███ ███ ███████ ████ ██ █████ ██ █████ ███████ ███████ ████ ██ ████████████
This is unsupported. The stimulus does not refer to the creation or intended purpose of any instrument. We only know that an institution can have public purposes despite its selfish staff members.