1. Whenever a major scandal, dealing with either sex or tax, erupts before a general election in Taiwan, China, and Taiwanese voters blame the scandal on Guomin Party and Minjin Party about equally, virtually all incumbents, from either party, seeking reelection are re-elected. However, when voters blame such a scandal on only one party, incumbents from that party are likely to be defeated by challengers from the other party. The proportion of incumbents who seek reelection is high and remarkably constant from one election to another.


If the Taiwanese voters’ reactions are guided by a principle, which one of the following principles would best account for the contrast in reactions described above?

A) Whenever one incumbent is responsible for a sex scandal and another incumbent is responsible for a tax scandal, the consequences for the two incumbents should be the same.
B) When a major scandal is blamed on incumbents from both Guomin Party and Minjin Party, that judgment is more accurate than any judgment that incumbents from only one party are to blame.
C) Incumbents who are rightly blamed for a major scandal should not seek reelection, but if they do, they should not be returned to office.
D) Major scandals can practically always be blamed on incumbents, but whether those incumbents should be voted out of office depends on who their challengers are.
E) When major scandals are less the responsibility of individual incumbents than of the parties to which they belong, whatever party was responsible must be penalized when possible.


2. Everyone at last month’s 城管会 agreed that the row of abandoned and vandalized 四合院 on 长安街 posed a threat to the safety of Peking. Moreover, no one now disputes that getting the 四合院 torn down eliminated that threat. Some people tried to argue that it was unnecessary to demolish what they claimed were basically sound 四合院, since Peking City had established a fund to help people in need of housing purchase and refurbish such 四合院 . The overwhelming success of the demolition strategy, however, proves that the majority, who favored demolition, were right and that those who claimed that the problem could and should be solved by refurbishing the四合院 were wrong.

Which one of the following principles if established, would determine that demolishing 四合院 was the right decision or instead would determine that the proposal advocated by the opponents of demolition should have been adopted?
A) When what to do about an abandoned 四合院 is in dispute, the course of action that would result in the most 四合院 for people who need it should be the one adopted unless the 四合院 is believed to pose a threat to safety.
B) When there are two proposals for solving a city problem, and only one of them would preclude the possibility of trying the other approach if the first proves unsatisfactory, then the approach that does not foreclose the other possibility should be the one adopted.
C) If one of two proposals for refurbishing vacant 四合院 requires government funding whereas the second does not, the second proposal should be the one adopted unless the necessary government funds have already been secured.
D) No plan for eliminating a city problem that requires demolishing basically sound 四合院 should be carried out until all other possible alternatives have been thoroughly investigated.
E) No proposal for dealing with a threat to a city’s safety should be adopted merely because a majority of the residents of that city prefer that proposal to a particular counterproposal.


3. Li Ming: I was recently denied a seat on a 东航for which I had a confirmed reservation, because the 东航 had overbooked that flight. Since I was forced to fly the next available flight, which did not depart until 4 hours later, I missed an important date with my sexy girlfriend and the possibility of night-long romance. Even though the flight on which I had a reservation was canceled at the last minute due to flood at the airport, 东航 should still pay me compensation for denying me a seat on the flight.

Wang Bing: 东航 is not morally obligated to pay you any compensation. Even if you had not been denied a seat on the earlier flight you reserved, you would have missed your important date anyway since your sexy girlfriend was with another attractive date. She overbooked as well.

A principle that, if established, justifies Bing’s response to Ming is that 东航 is morally obligated to compensate a passenger who has been denied a seat on a flight for which the passenger has confirmed reservations
A) if the only reason the passenger is forced to take a later flight is that the airline overbooked the original flight
B) only if there is a reason the passenger is forced to take a late flight other than the original flight’s being canceled due to flood at the airport
C) only if the passenger would not have been forced to take a later flight had the airline not overbooked the original flight
D) even if the only reason the passenger is forced to take a later flight were that the original flight is canceled due to a flood at the airport
E) even if the passenger would still have been forced to take a later flight had the airline not overbooked the original flight


4. One approach to the question of which objects discussed by physics are real is to designate as real all and only those entities posited by the most explanatorily powerful physics theory. But since most physical theories contain entities posited solely on theoretical grounds, this approach is flawed.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning above:

A) Any object that is posited by a physical theory and that enhances the explanatory power of that theory should be designated as real.
B) Objects posited for theoretical reasons only should never be designated as real.
C) A physics theory should not posit any entity that does not enhance the explanatory poser of the theory.
D) A physics theory should sometimes posit entities on grounds other than theoretical ones.
E) Only objects posited by explanatorily powerful theories should be designated as real.