When people submit their posts to ChaseDream.com, their intentions cannot be more bad than good.Otherwise, as members of a close-knit on-line community, we would stop trusting each other. However, no on-line community, ChaseDream.com included, can survive without mutual trust among its members. The argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?
(A) It neglects the possibility that a true belief can have unexpected harmful consequences.
(B) It mistakenly assumes that if two different claims cannot be true at the same time, then both claims cannot be false at the same time.
(C) It questions the validity of a claim by calling into question the intentions of those who make the claim.
(D) It assumes without justification that whenever two possible outcomes are possible, inevitably the more negative one will occur.
(E) It gives no reason to believe that a statement that is true of a given online community is also true of any other online community.
When people submit their posts to ChaseDream.com, their intentions cannot be more bad than good. Otherwise, as members of a close-knit on-line community, we would stop trusting each other. However, no on-line community, ChaseDream.com included, can survive without mutual trust among its members. The argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?
(A) It neglects the possibility that a true belief can have unexpected harmful consequences.
(B) It mistakenly assumes that if two different claims cannot be true at the same time, then both claims cannot be false at the same time.
(C) It questions the validity of a claim by calling into question the intentions of those who make the claim.
(D) It assumes without justification that whenever two possible outcomes are possible, inevitably the more negative one will occur.
(E) It gives no reason to believe that a statement that is true of a given online community is also true of any other online community.
Conclusion: The intentions of CDer’s cannot be more bad than good. This is a value judgement.
Evidence: The above conclusion is built on an argument that if we believe otherwise, i.e., if we believe that the intentions are more bad than good, then the consequence of such a belief would be very negative. Hence, this deleterious belief cannot be true.
We need to weaken this argument by one of the answer choices.
(A) Correct. The key here is to identify why the argument is flawed. The author states that if we do not believe that member's intentions are more good than bad, this FALSE belief would have harmful consequences. From this statement, the author goes further to conclude that the FALSE belief is FALSE. In layman’s language, something is bad because it leads to harmful end results. What the author is assuming is that in the case of a TRUE belief, i.e., we believe that member's intention are more good than bad, none of the bad consequence would happen! Therefore, the TRUE belief is TRUE. But there is no evidence in the argument to back up this assumption. So the argument is vulnerable to the objection that the author does not present any evidence which prevents a true belief from having dire consequences.
(B) Incorrect. The argument focuses on the consequence of certain beliefs. But there is no mentioning of the possibilities in which the two beliefs could be both true or both wrong. So (B) is out of scope.
(C) Incorrect. The argument does challenge the truth of a claim that CDer’s intentions can be more bad than good. But this is a hypothetical claim behind which stands nobody. So (C) is irrelevant.
(D) Incorrect. Along the reasoning process, the author deals with situations having two possible outcomes. For example, an on-line community ChaseDream.com can survive or cannot survive. But the author does not assume that the most negative outcome (not surviving) would be certain. On the contrary, the author assumes that the more positive outcome (surviving) will prevail. So (D) is a 180 wrong answer.
(E) Incorrect. The argument is a general statement about members of ChaseDream.com and their beliefs. Furthermore the argument is built on the effects of those beliefs on the survival of the on-line community composed of those members. If anything, the author believes that what happens to other on-line communities will be applicable to ChaseDream.com. So the inference is from what is true about many other groups to what is about a particular group. So the argument is not vulnerable to the criticism detailed in (E).