Since Empathy Is Essential For People To Be Willing To Follow Moral Codes GMAT Critical Reasoning

Question: Since empathy is essential for people to be willing to follow moral codes that sometimes require them to ignore their own welfare to help others, civilized society could not exist without empathy.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?

(A) Civilized society can exist only if there are people who are willing to at least sometimes ignore their own welfare to help others.
(B) Failure to empathize with other people usually leads to actions detrimental to civilized society.
(C) If everyone in a society is sometimes willing to ignore his or her own welfare to help others, that society will be civilized.
(D) Moral codes that include the requirement that people disregard their own welfare in order to help others have arisen within some civilized societies.
(E) People who feel empathy tend to ignore their own welfare for the sake of others.

Explanation

Given that, Because empathy is essential for people to be willing to follow moral rules that sometimes require them to ignore their own well-being in order to help others, a civilized society could not exist without empathy.

Let's approach the answer choices.

A: Correct
The argument asserts that empathy is essential for people to follow moral codes that require them to disregard their own welfare to help others. The conclusion is that civilized society could not exist without empathy. To support this conclusion, the argument assumes that a component of civilized society is the presence of people who are willing to put aside their own welfare for the benefit of others, which aligns with option (A).

B: Incorrect
While this statement might seem reasonable, it doesn't directly relate to the argument's logic that empathy is essential for people to follow moral codes that require them to disregard their own welfare to help others. The argument doesn't explicitly state that failure to empathize always leads to detrimental actions.

C: Incorrect
This option presents a generalization about society being civilized based on people's willingness to ignore their welfare. However, the argument focuses on empathy being essential, and this assumption is too broad and not necessarily aligned with the argument's conclusion.

D: Incorrect
This option introduces a new premise about the existence of moral codes, but it doesn't directly address the role of empathy as being essential for people to follow these moral codes.

E: Incorrect
This option also introduces a new premise about the relationship between empathy and disregarding one's welfare, but it doesn't directly address the argument's focus on the necessity of empathy for following moral codes.

“Since empathy is essential for people to be willing to follow moral codesl”– is a GMAT Critical question. To answer the question, a candidate can either find a piece of evidence that would weaken the argument or have logical flaws in the argument. GMAT critical reasoning tests the logical and analytical skills of the candidates. This topic requires candidates to find the argument's strengths and weaknesses or the logical flaw in the argument. The GMAT CR section contains 10 -13 GMAT critical reasoning questions out of 36 GMAT verbal questions.

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