Principle JustifyDiff: Easy
Logic Breakdown
Passage Summary: A biographer left out some bad information about a politician and claimed he didn't know about it. The argument says he's still to blame because that information was easy for anyone to find.
Conclusion: Biographers cannot use ignorance of publicly available facts to avoid blame for misleading their readers.
Reasoning: The incriminating facts omitted from the biography were available to anyone at the time of writing, so the author's claim of ignorance is insufficient to evade accountability.
Analysis: The argument relies on a gap between the availability of information and the moral or professional obligation to find it. It assumes that if a fact is 'available to anyone,' a professional biographer has a duty to uncover it before publishing. To justify this conclusion, we need a principle that explicitly links the accessibility of information to the author's responsibility. Look for a rule stating that professionals are accountable for knowing facts that are reasonably accessible in their field.
Conclusion: Biographers cannot use ignorance of publicly available facts to avoid blame for misleading their readers.
Reasoning: The incriminating facts omitted from the biography were available to anyone at the time of writing, so the author's claim of ignorance is insufficient to evade accountability.
Analysis: The argument relies on a gap between the availability of information and the moral or professional obligation to find it. It assumes that if a fact is 'available to anyone,' a professional biographer has a duty to uncover it before publishing. To justify this conclusion, we need a principle that explicitly links the accessibility of information to the author's responsibility. Look for a rule stating that professionals are accountable for knowing facts that are reasonably accessible in their field.
Passage Stimulus
Passage Redacted
Unlock Full Passage4.Which one of the following principles, if established, does most to justify the position advanced by the passage?
Correct Answer
E
It states that authors should be blamed for readers’ misperceptions caused by omitting facts that were widely available when the book was written. That directly justifies blaming the biographer despite the claimed ignorance.
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