The passage will often give you a set of facts or state a principle. A principle is a rule or generalization. The trick here is figuring out which “rule” best applies to the set of acts or vice versa.
? Fact: You lost your shirt at the laundromat.
? Rule A: You are responsible for clothes you intentionally lose.
? Rule B: You are responsible for everything you legally own.
? Even though Rule B is more general, it is more likely to apply here because you probably did not lose your shirt intentionally. To tackle principle questions, you must forget the details or facts specific to the question; and try to focus on the rule underlying the argument in the stimulus.

Principle questions overlap with other question types, especially strengthen questions. Depending on the specific question, it usually helps to ask yourself:
? Does the rule apply to the facts?
? Does it strengthen or weaken the argument?

Principle strengthen

Prompts for principle strengthen
? Which one of the following principles underlies the arbitrator’s argument?
? Which one of the following principles most strongly supports the argument above?
? Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the critic’s reasoning?

Examples:
1) Professor Chan: The literature department’s undergraduate courses should cover only true literary works, and not such frivolous material as advertisements.
Professor Wigmore: Advertisements might or might not be true literary works but they do have a powerfully detrimental effect on society—largely because people cannot discern their real messages. The literature department’s courses give students the critical skills to analyze and understand texts. Therefore, it is the literature department’s responsibility to include the study of advertisements in its undergraduate courses.

Which one of the following principles most strongly supports Professor Wigmore’s argument?
(A) Advertisements ought to be framed in such a way that their real messages are immediately clear.
(B) Any text that is subtly constructed and capable of affecting people’s thought and action ought to be considered a form of literature.
(C) All undergraduate students ought to take at least one course that focuses on the development of critical skills.
(D) The literature department’s courses ought to enable students to analyze and understand any text that could have a harmful effect on society.
(E) Any professor teaching an undergraduate course in the literature department ought to be free to choose the material to be covered in that course.

2) Ethicist: In a recent judicial decision, a contractor was ordered to make restitution to a company because of a bungled construction job, even though the company had signed a written agreement prior to entering into the contract that the contractor would not be financially liable should the task not be adequately performed. Thus, it was morally wrong for the company to change its mind and seek restitution.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the ethicist’s reasoning?
(A) It is morally wrong for one party not to abide by its part of an agreement only if the other party abides by its part of the agreement.
(B) It is morally wrong to seek a penalty for an action for which the agent is unable to make restitution.
(C) It is morally wrong for one person to seek to penalize another person for an action that the first person induced the other person to perform.
(D) It is morally wrong to ignore the terms of an agreement that was freely undertaken only if there is clear evidence that the agreement was legally permissible.
(E) It is morally wrong to seek compensation for an action performed in the context of a promise to forgo such compensation.

3) The government-owned gas company has begun selling stoves and other gas appliances to create a larger market for its gas. Merchants who sell such products complain that the competition will hurt their businesses. That may well be; however, the government-owned gas company is within its rights. After all, the owner of a private gas company might will decide to sell such appliances and surely there would be nothing wrong with that.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps justify the reasoning above?
(A) Government-owned companies have the right to do whatever private businesses have the right to do.
(B) A government should always take seriously the complaints of merchants.
(C) Private businesses have not right to compete with government monopolies.
(D) There is nothing wrong with a government-owned company selling products so long as owners of private companies do not complain.
(E) There is nothing wrong with private companies competing against each other.

Principle application

Prompts for principle application
? The principle that Malcolm invokes, if established, would justify which one of the following judgments?
? Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle illustrated above?

4) Walter: Although cigarette smoking is legal, it should be banned on all airline flights. Cigarette smoking in the confines of an aircraft exposes nonsmokers to harmful secondhand smoke that they cannot avoid.

Which one the following principles, if established, would justify the proposal put forth by Walter?
(A) People should be prohibited from engaging in an otherwise legal activity would unavoidable expose others to harm.
(B) An activity should be banned only if most situations in which a person engaged in that activity would inevitably expose others to harm.
(C) A legal activity that has the potential for causing harm to others in certain situations should be modified in those situations to render it harmless.
(D) People who regularly engage in an activity that has the potential for harming others when that activity takes place in certain situations should be excluded from those situations.
(E) If an activity is legal in some situations in which a person’s engaging in that activity could harm others, then that activity should be legal in all situations.

5) New legislation would require a seven-day waiting period in the sale of handguns to private individuals, in order that records of prisons could be checked and the sale of handguns to people likely to hurt other people thereby prevented. People opposed to this legislation claim that prison records are so full of errors that the proposed law would prevent as many law-abiding citizens as criminals from having access to handguns.

If the claim made by people opposed to the new legislation is true, which one of the following is a principle that, if established, would do the most to justify opposition to the new legislation on the basis of that claim?
(A) The rights of law-abiding citizens are more worthy of protection than are the rights of criminals.
(B) Nothing should be done to restrict potential criminals at the cost of placing restrictions on law-abiding citizens.
(C) Legislation should not be enacted if no benefit could accrue to society as a 
(D) No restrictions should be placed on the sale of merchandise unless sale of that merchandise could endanger innocent people.
(E) Even citizens who are neither fugitives nor felons should not be permitted to own a handgun unless they have received adequate training.