P1. Pornography can cause harm.
C. We should ban pornography.

Which premises can we add (individually) that would make the argument valid:

Question

P1. Pornography can cause harm.
C. We should ban pornography.

Which premises can we add (individually) that would make the argument valid:

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

We are given a short argument structure: 'Pornography can cause harm' (P) and 'C. We should ban pornography' (the conclusion). The task asks which individual premises, inserted as additional premises, would render the argument valid.

Option 1: 'if x can cause harm, x should be banned.' This is a conditional generalization: for any thing x, if x can cause harm, then x should be banned. If we accept this as a premise, and we also accept 'Pornography can cause harm' as given, we can instantiate the conditional with x = pornography to get: 'pornography can cause harm' implies 'pornography should be banned.' This directly supports the conclusion in a straightforward, rule-following way, making the argument valid by modus ponens (from if-then and the antecedent, infer the consequent).

Option 2: 'Everything that can cause harm should be banned.' This is a universal claim: for all x, if x can cause harm, then x should be banned. Given the fact 'Pornography can cause harm,' we can instantiate the universal: 'Everything that can cause harm should be banned' together with 'pornography can cause harm' yields 'pornography should be banned.' Here too, the conclusion follows from the premises, so the argument would be valid with this as an additional premise.

Notes on the implications:
- For Option 1, the added premise is a specific conditional and directly supports the target conclusion without needing further generalizations. It's a typical form of a normative rule that connects harm to prohibition.
- For Option 2, the added premise is broader and more sweeping. While it preserves validity in this particular case (because pornography is included among 'everything'), it may raise concerns about overreach or non-monotonicity in real-world reasoning, since it would entail banning all harm-causing things, which could be impractical or unacceptable in other contexts. Nonetheless, in terms of logical validity for this argument, it suffices to derive the conclusion from the premises.

In summary, both options, when added individually as premises, provide a valid route from 'Pornography can cause harm' to 'Pornography should be banned' by enabling a straightforward inference from cause-to-ban or via a universal rule about everything that can cause harm. Each option functions differently semantically, but both yield a valid argument structure for the stated conclusion.

PHI 007Y 001 SS1 2025 Week 6 Quiz

P1. Pornography can cause harm. C. We should ban pornography. Which premises can we add (individually) that would make the argument valid:

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