GMAT考试写作指导：Argument范文七二

　　18. In this argument, the head of a government department concludes that the

　　department does not need to strengthen either its ethics regulations or its enforcement

　　mechanisms in order to encourage ethical behavior by companies with which it does

　　business. The first reason given is that businesses have agreed to follow the

　　departments existing code of ethics. The second reason is that the existing code is

　　relevant to the current business environment. This argument is unacceptable for several

　　reasons.

　　The sole support for the claim that stronger enforcement mechanisms are

　　unnecessary comes from the assumption that companies will simply keep their promises

　　to follow the existing code. But, since the department head clearly refers to rules

　　violations by these same businesses within the past year, his faith in their word is

　　obviously misplaced. Moreover, it is commonly understood that effective rules carry

　　with them methods of enforcement and penalties for violations.

　　To show that a strengthened code is unnecessary, the department head claims that

　　the existing code of ethics is relevant. In partial clarification of the vague term

　　relevant, we are told that the existing code was approved in direct response to

　　violations occurring in the past year. If the full significance of being relevant is that the

　　code responds to last years violations, then the department head must assume that those

　　violations will be representative of all the kinds of ethics problems that concern the

　　department. This is unlikely; in addition, thinking so produces an oddly short-sighted

　　idea of relevance.

　　Such a narrow conception of the relevance of an ethics code points up its

　　weakness. The strength of an ethics code lies in its capacity to cover many different

　　instances of the general kinds of behavior thought to be unethical to cover not only last

　　years specific violations, but those of previous years and years to come. Yet this author

　　explicitly rejects a comprehensive code, preferring the existing code because it is

　　relevant and not in abstract anticipation of potential violations.

　　In sum, this argument is naive, vague and poorly reasoned. The department head

　　has not given careful thought to the connection between rules and their enforcement, to

　　what makes an ethics code relevant, or to how comprehensiveness strengthens a code.

　　In the final analysis, he adopts a backwards view that a history of violations should

　　determine rules of ethics, rather than the other way around.