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Some moral virtues, such as honesty, tend to benefit one who has them; others, such as generosity, do not. █ ████████ ██████████████ ██ ███ █ █████ ██████ ██ ██ █████ ██ ██ ███████████ ██ █████ ███████
Objective: Must Be True Questions
Must Be True questions present a series of claims in the stimulus, then ask us to provide an additional claim that can be validly inferred (i.e. on the spectrum of support, our answer choice must be super-duperly supported).
So it’s highly beneficial to spend time up front wrapping your head around the stimulus – simplifying or diagramming grammatically-complex claims, splitting out combined claims into two or more separate claims, etc. – and the dream is to generate your own inference(s) to proactively seek out in the answer choices.
That’s not always practical (sometimes it’s just hard, and sometimes there are too many to track), in which case using process of elimination – measuring each answer choice against the stimulus to ask “does this follow?” – is completely fine. But process of elimination or no, you need a crystal clear understanding of the stimulus.
Distilling The Premises
In my first run through the stimulus, I, the person writing this explanation, didn’t explicitly note the specific claims that turn out to be crucial in the correct answer choice. I only realized they needed to be explicitly stated after reading the answers and backtracking. I mention this because it’s a thing that happens to everyone, and I don’t want to pretend catching everything in this stimulus is super obvious.
Here’s the list of claims you can draw from the stimulus:
- Some moral virtues do tend to benefit you.
- Some moral virtues don’t tend to benefit you.
- Honesty does benefit you.
- Generosity does not benefit you.
- Moral virtues never tend to be detrimental to others.
- (And here are the ones I initially glossed over)
- Honesty is a moral virtue.
- Generosity is a moral virtue.
As a general principle, it’s much easier to draw valid inferences from “all” claims than it is to draw them from “some” claims. So even if you’re looking at this long list of claims and thinking “there’s way too many to anticipate anything specific,” you should at least move into the answer choices with a focus on claims other than 1 and 2.
22.
If the statements above are █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ██ █████
a
A person totally ███████ ██ █████ ██████ ████ ████ ███ ██ ████ ███████████████ ████ ███████ ███████
b
Being honest tends ███ ██ ██ ███████████ ██ █████ ███████
c
A morally virtuous ██████ █████ ██ ██ █ ███████ ███████ ██ █████ ██████ ████ █ ██████ ███ ██ ███ ███████ █████████
d
Being generous tends ██ ██ ██ █████ ███ █████████ ███ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ███████
e
If a personal ██████████████ ████ ███ ███ █████ ██ ███████ ███████ ████ ████ ████████ ██████████████ ██ █ █████ ███████