Ethicist: A person who treats others well is more worthy of praise if this treatment is at least partially motivated by feelings of compassion than if it is entirely motivated by cold and dispassionate concern for moral obligation. This is so despite the fact that a person can choose to do what is morally right but cannot choose to have feelings.
Summary
Who is more worthy of praise? A person who treats others well partially out of feelings of compassion, or a person who treats others well entirely out of of moral obligation? The person motivated by feelings is more worthy of praise.
People can choose to do what is morally right.
People cannot choose to have feelings.
Notable Valid Inferences
People can be more worthy of praise even when they are motivated by something they cannot control than when they are motivated by something that they can control.
A
Only actions that are at least partially the result of a person’s feelings should be used in measuring the praiseworthiness of that person.
Could be true. The author believes a person motivated by compassion is more worthy of praise. So he could believe that only actions resulting from feelings should be used in determining praiseworthiness.
B
If a person feels compassion toward the people affected by that person’s actions, yet these actions diminish the welfare of those people, that person does not deserve praise.
Could be true. The stimulus only tells us about who is more or less deserving of praise. This is a relative relationship. We do not know who does or does not deserve praise.
C
Only what is subject to a person’s choice should be used in measuring the praiseworthiness of that person.
Must be false. We know a person who’s motivated by feelings, which we can’t control, is more worthy of praise than a person who’s motivated by obligation, which we can control. So the author disagrees with the idea that praiseworthiness depends only on stuff we can choose.
D
Someone who acts without feelings of compassion toward those affected by the actions is worthy of praise if those actions enhance the welfare of the people affected.
Could be true. The stimulus only tells us about who is more or less deserving of praise. This is a relative relationship. We do not know who is or is not worthy of praise.
E
If someone wants to have compassion toward others but does not, that person is worthy of praise.
Could be true. The stimulus only tells us about who is more or less deserving of praise. This is a relative relationship. We do not know who is or is not worthy of praise.
Lucy: Nonsense. You’ve always acknowledged that philosophy is a genuinely autonomous discipline and that, like most people, you think of philosophy as addressing issues also addressed by the disciplines of linguistics, mathematics, and psychology. A field of study is a genuinely autonomous discipline by virtue of its having a unique methodology rather than by virtue of its addressing issues that no other field of study addresses.