Self-study
Magazine article: Support Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually deters people from committing them. ███ █ █████ ████ ██ █████████ █████████ ███ ████████ █████████ ████ ████ ███████ ████ ██████████ ██ ███ █ ██████████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ██████████
Structure: Flawed Argument
The argument starts with a conditional statement. If punishment deters people from committing crimes, it is justified:
deter → justified
The argument then states that empirical data shows that punishment doesn't work as a deterrent. Therefore, the argument concludes that punishment is never justified.
Notable Flaws
We start with a statement that deterrence is sufficient to justify a crime:
deter → justify
The stimulus then adds, as a second premise, that the sufficient condition of deterrence is never met, and then concludes that the necessary condition therefore never occurs:
/deter → /justify
This is a classic sufficiency/necessity confusion. Knowing that the sufficient condition is never met doesn't imply that the necessary condition can never occur. There might be other conditions that can justify punishment, besides it working as a deterrent.
16.
The reasoning in the magazine █████████ ████████ ██ ██████ ███████ ███ ████████
a
depends on data ████ █████ ██ ██████ ██ ███████ ███ ██ ██████
Incorrect. We don't have any reason to think the data is biased. In fact, everything we know about the data — that it is "carefully assembled and analyzed" and "empirical" — seems to suggest the opposite.
b
mistakenly allows the ███ ████ ████████████ ██ █████ ██ ███████
Incorrect. The argument never uses "punishment" in two different senses.
c
mistakes being sufficient ██ ███████ ██████████ ███ █████ ████████ ██ ███████ ██
Correct. The argument states that deterrence is sufficient to justify punishment, then concludes that the absence of deterrence means punishment is never justified — as if deterrence were a necessary condition for punishment. There could be other conditions sufficient to justify punishment, even if deterrence doesn't occur.
d
ignores the problem ██ ██████████ █████████ ███ ████████
Incorrect. This problem isn't especially relevant to the argument, which never makes any claims about who is being punished. The key flaw is the sufficiency/necessity confusion.
e
attempts to be ████ ███████ ████ ███ ███████ ██████ ████████ ██████
Incorrect. We don't know anything about how precise this subject matter "allows" us to be. This doesn't describe the key sufficiency/necessity confusion flaw in the argument.