PT 30 Section # 2 Question 11

[roballen]

Can someone please explain the breakdown of this question and how you arrive at D. Thanks.

[yzero1]

The key thing to note here is that there are TWO promises being made in the argument: an IMPLICIT promise made to the teacher to tell the truth and an EXPLICIT promise to Jeanne to not rat her out to the teacher. The teacher's argument is that the student should break her EXPLICIT promise to Jeanne in order to keep her IMPLICIT promise to the teacher.

In order for the teacher's conclusion to follow, you must assume that there are some times when implicit promises are worse to break than some explicit ones. Try negating the answer choice (D). If there are NO implicit promises that are worse to break than explicit ones, then there is no reason for the student to keep his/her implicit promise to the teacher and break his/her explicit promise to Jeanne.