Question

Suppose I have promised to keep a confidence and someone asks me a question that I cannot answertruthfully without thereby breaking the promise.Obviously, I cannot both keep and break the samepromise. Therefore, one cannot be obliged both to answer all questions truthfully and to keep allpromises.

Answer 1

Answer and explanation:

This situation follows a parallel reasoning structure. Parallel reasoning is a short showcased situation which present different options, but all of them follow a chain of reasoning.

Given the scenario presented above these lines, one could directly come up to the logic conclusion that a person cannot take an action without necessarily breaking any other of said promises. Let’s say the person decides to lie in order to keep the confidence, which would be breaking the promise of saying the truth. On the other hand, if the person is honest and breaks out the truth about it, that would be automatically erasing the confidence. So that’s why this is a parallel reasoning situation, as any of the decisions that could be made would have a parallel and direct effect on any of the other options.