The question stem reads: Which one of the following most accurately describes a flaw in the reasoning above? This is a Flaw question.
The stimulus begins by claiming that "it is a characteristic of great artists generally, and of great writers in particular, to have a discerning view of the basic social and political arrangements of the society in which they live." That was a mouthful. "It" refers to the ability to discern the social and political arrangements of society. Let's reorganize this sentence to read:"Having a discerning view of the basic social and political arrangments of society is a characteristic of great artists generally and great writers in particular.
I have italicized the "and" to highlight the sentence structure of one subject and two predicates. The subject is the ability to discern social and political arrangements in society. The predicates can be broken down to 1.) is a characteristic of great artists generally and 2.) is a characteristic of great writers in particular. Let us do away with predicate 1 and only focus on predicate 2. Now we get:
"The ability to discern society's social and political arrangements is a characteristic of great writers."
The argument then concludes that the greater the writer you are, the greater your ability to perceive your society's social and political arrangements.
The stimulus has claimed that being a great writer is sufficient to perceive society. The argument concluded that as you increase the sufficient condition (greatness in writing), you will see an increase in the necessary condition (ability to perceive society). This is flawed reasoning. Do you know what else being a great writer is sufficient for? Having two eyeballs. Using the stimulus' reasoning, the greater the writer you are, the more eyeballs you will have. You see where I am going here? That is our flaw. The stimulus assumes that more of a sufficient condition means more of a necessary condition. Let's go to the answer choices.
Answer Choice (A) is not what we are looking for. (A) is the fallacy of division: assuming what is true of the whole must be true for some or all of its parts. (A) would look better if the argument said: "Great artists generally have the ability to discern society; therefore, great writers have the ability to discern society.
Answer Choice (B) is incorrect. (B) would look better if the argument went: great writers sometimes have the ability to discern society. Therefore all great writers have the ability to discern society.
Answer Choice (C) is incorrect. The argument makes no mention of what writers or artists do not have the ability to discern.
Answer Choice (D) is not what the argument does. First, the argument is not concerned with great individuals, only great writers. Second, the argument does not make a sufficient vs. necessary error. (D) would look better if the argument went: "Great writers have the ability to discern society. Therefore only great writers have the ability to discern society.
Correct Answer Choice (E) is what we discussed.
The question stem reads: which of the following most accurately describes a way in which Willet's reasoning is questionable? This is a Flaw question.
The stimulus begins with Benson's argument. Because we are interested in Willet's argument, we do not need to evaluate Benson's argument. However, it is still important to read Benson's argument to understand the context in which Willet's reply is made. Benson believes that maintaining the quality of life in his city requires that the city restrict growth. That is why he supports the new zoning regulations.
Willet replies that he heard the same argument (that protecting the quality of life requires restricting growth) ten years ago and five years ago. He then says both times; the city council was justified in not restricting growth. So he agrees with the city council's decision not to restrict growth. Willet claims that since there is nothing new in this idea of restricting growth, he opposes the new zoning regulations that restrict growth.
Right here, we have the fallacious reasoning that what is true of the past must be true of the future, which is an example of the Problem of Induction. The classic example is concluding that all swans must be white because you have only seen white swans. The conclusion is proven false once you eventually encounter a black swan. Similarly, Willet is assuming that because the city council was justified in not restricting growth in the past, it must be the case that there is no reason to restrict growth now. However, there may be new reasons the city should restrict growth that didn't exist five and ten years ago.
Answer Choice (A) is incorrect because Willet does not presume growth is necessarily good. We do not know his opinion on growth at all, only that the city council justified not restricting growth five and 10 years ago.
Answer Choice (B) is incorrect because there is no attack on Benson's personality.
Correct Answer Choice (C) is what we discussed. Benson assumed that what was true in the past must be true in the present/future. However, there might be new reasons to restrict growth now that did not exist five and ten years ago.
Answer Choice (D) is incorrect because other factors contributing to quality of life are irrelevant not only to Willet's argument but Benson's also to Benson's argument. Benso claims that restricting growth is necessary for maintaining the quality of life (maintain quality of life -> restrict growth). So it would not matter how many other factors contribute to maintaining quality of life; failing to restrict growth would result in an inability to maintain quality of life ( the contrapositive: /restrict growth -> /maintain quality of life).
Answer Choice (E) is arbitrary. If you picked this, you likely missed that Willet claimed: "The city council was justified in deciding not to restrict growth." It does not matter how qualified or poorly qualified they were; their decisions were justified. One can both be poorly qualified to make a decision and end up making a justified decision. One can also be both highly qualified to make a decision and also make an unjustified decision (looking at you, American politics).
The question stem reads: Which one of the following, if true, best resolves the discrepancy above? This is a Resolve Reconcile Explain question.
In the Core Curriculum, we discussed how our job is to develop a hypothesis or explanation for the seemingly contradictory phenomena the stimulus provides. The stimulus tells us that "Sambar deer are physically incapable of digesting meat." Ok, the deer cannot consume and process meat for energy. But the stimulus also tells us that Sambar deer have been observed killing and feeding on box turtles. That’s puzzling. If the deer can’t eat meat, why are they killing and eating the box turtles? Our job is to explain that exact question.
Before we move into the answer choices, let's do some prephasing. We know that Sambar deer are incapable of digesting meat, so it would be bizarre if we noticed the deer consuming turtle meat. However, the stimulus says that the deer have been observed eating turtles. Is there more to a turtle than its meat? Of course there is! Perhaps the deer are eating the turtles' bones, skin, or eyes (are eyes meat? I digress). That would help explain the phenomena. The deer can’t digest meat, but they are not hunting and eating the turtles' meat; they are eating something else. Now that we have a solid prephase, we can join the Sambar deer and go hunting.
Correct Answer Choice (A) is exactly what we prephrased. (A) explains that the deer eat only the bony shell of the turtles. The deer are not killing and eating the turtles for meat (which the deer cannot digest); they are killing and eating the turtles for their shells.
Answer Choice (B) almost looks good but only provides a partial explanation. If you picked (B), you likely realized that (B) would explain why the deer kill the turtles when they cannot eat them. The deer aren't hunting the turtles. The deer are killing turtles by accident (turtle-slaughter?) However, (B) fails to explain why the deer go on to eat their unfortunate victims. Imagine your friend found you feeding on the carcass of a squirrel you had recently driven over and asked, "why are you doing that?" Responding through your blood-soaked teeth with, "I did it by accident," would leave your friend mildly horrified and still confused. For that reason, (B) is out.
Answer Choice (C) fails to explain both the eating and the killing. The fact that the deer kill and eat the turtles only on occasion does nothing to explain why they kill and eat the turtles when they cannot digest meat.
Answer Choice (D) is similar to (B) in providing only a partial explanation. (D) says that the turtles compete with the deer for food. That might explain why the deer have the incentive to kill the turtles. If they kill the turtles, the deer won't have to compete with them for food. However, that does not explain why they go on to eat the turtles. You could argue that the eating of the turtles is to strike fear into the other turtle's hearts and warn them away from the deer's territory. But at that point, though, we are making too many assumptions to make (D) work. So (D) is out.
Answer Choice (E) would explain how the deer are able to kill the turtles by saying that the deer are faster and more agile. However, our job isn’t to explain how the deer are killing the turtles, but why the deer are killing the turtles. For that reason, (E) is out.
The question stem reads: The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds? This is a Flaw question.
The author begins by claiming that it is clear that Egyptians were the first society to produce alcoholic beverages. That sounds like a conclusion; let's see the author's evidence for that claim. The author then describes how it had been thought the Babylonians were first because they had a process for fermentation around 1500 BC. However, archaeologists have found an Egyptian cup from 2000 B.C. With chemical residue that indicates it contained an alcoholic form of beer. So the author's argument uses the premise that the Egyptian cup is the oldest evidence of alcohol to conclude that Egypt must have been the first society to produce alcohol. Immediately, we can see the author's line of reasoning as flawed. Let's go back in time to 5 seconds before the archaeologists found this Egyptian cup. Then, the oldest evidence we had of alcohol was from the Babylonians. Using the authors' line of reasoning, we conclude that the Babylonians were the first society to produce alcohol. We would be subsequently proven wrong when the archeologists find the Egyptian cup 5 seconds later. All that was needed to prove our argument wrong was finding new evidence that an older civilization had alcohol. Let's return to the present, where the author claims that Egyptians must have been the oldest society to produce alcohol. How do we know we won't find even earlier evidence of alcohol in the future? We can't. The author has made an error in assuming what is true of the past must be true in the future. This is the Problem of Induction.
However, there is an even more fundamental problem. What we humans know has no bearing on the actual truth of the matter. Even if we could see into the future and determine that this Egyptian cup would be the oldest evidence we find, we could not say that Egyptians were, in fact, the first society to produce alcohol. An earlier society could have created alcohol but left no evidence behind for us to find. The upshot is that a lack of evidence for a claim does not constitute evidence that the claim is false.
Answer Choice (A) is incorrect because the claim that Egypt was the first society to produce alcohol is not a generalization about Egyptian society. Either they were the first to produce alcohol, or they were not. A generalization would be that all Egyptians drank alcohol. If the author argued that all Egyptians drank alcohol because we found a single cup in a pharaoh's tomb, then (A) would look better.
Answer Choice (B) is wrong. The premises talk about two distinct types of alcoholic beverage (Egyptian beer vs. Babylonian wine). However, the conclusion talks about alcoholic beverages in general. Alcoholic beer counts as an alcoholic beverage.(B) would look better if the author used the old cup of Egyptian beer to conclude Egyptians were the first society to produce wine.
Answer Choice (C) is incorrect. If we mapped the stimulus onto (C), we would get the following: Because Egpyt developed fermentation before the Babylonians, the development of fermentation in Babylon depended on the development of fermentation in Egypt. Wildly off base from the argument, eliminate.
Correct Answer Choice (D) is what we prephased. The argument does ignore that the first known instance of alcohol (the Egyptian wine cup) is not the first instance of alcohol.
Answer Choice (E) is incorrect. While it is true that the author provides no evidence for the claim that they produced wine as early as 1500 BC, it is irrelevant. If it is true the Babylonians had wine as early as 1500 BC, the Egyptian cup is still older. If it is false, the Babylonians had wine as early as 1500 BC, and the Egyptian cup is still the oldest. Additionally, Even if the author provided evidence for the claim about Babylonian wine, we would still the argument would still be flawed due to the problem discussed in (D).
The question stem reads: The Conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed? This is a Sufficient Assumption question.
Love is complicated in the real world, which is no different than love in the LSAT. It's possible to love someone and not be loved back. Unfortunately, love is not a biconditional. My previous relationships confirm that. While reading this stimulus, it is essential to see which "way" the love is going. Are you loving or being loved? The stimulus is short and conditional heavy, so let's break these down as we go. The stimulus starts with "whoever is kind is loved by somebody or another." This translates into the lawgic:
kind -> loved by someone
Next, the stimulus claims that "whoever loves anyone is happy." This translated into the lawgic:
Love anyone -> happy
The argument concludes, "Whoever is kind is happy." Translated:
Kind -> happy
Let's organize this argument into:
P1: Kind -> loved by someone
P2: Love anyone -> happy
______________________________________________
C: Kind -> happy
We can kick up the sufficient condition so we now have:
P3: Kind
P1: Kind -> loved by someone
P2: Love anyone -> happy
______________________________________________
C: Happy
We want to get to "happy," and P2 will get us there if we can satisfy "love anyone." Let's make that our necessary condition: (__) -> love anyone. Now we need to find a sufficient condition that will be satisfied by the argument. Notice how P3 satisfies the sufficient condition of P1, so we can infer that "loved by someone" occurs. Let's make "loved by someone" the sufficient condition of conditional: loved by someone -> love anyone. Now we have a valid argument:
P3: Kind
P1: Kind -> loved by someone
SA: Loved by someone -> love anyone
P2: Love anyone -> happy
______________________________________________
C: Happy
P3 will trigger P1, P1 triggers our SA, and our SA will trigger P2, which brings us to the desired conclusion of "happy." Happy is exactly what we are because we just solved this four-star problem. Let's move to the answer choices.
Answer Choice (A) is incorrect. If you picked (A), you likely misread P1 and thought that being kind meant you loved someone. You can rule out (A) quickly by seeing we are missing the concept of "loved by."
Answer Choice (B) is also out. You can rule out (B) because we are missing the concept of "loved by."
Answer Choice (C) is also out. We want to get to "happy," but (C) has "happy" in sufficient condition; we can rule (C) out.
Correct Answer Choice (D) is the contrapositive of our prephase. (D) translate to:
Loves no one -> loved by no one
We take the contrapositive:
/(loved by no one) -> /(loves no one)
Not being loved by no one means you are loved by someone. Not loving no one means you love someone. So we get our SA: "Loved by someone -> love anyone."
Answer Choice (E) is the most popular wrong answer. If you picked (E), you likely thought that (E) would let you infer "loves everyone." "Loves everyone" would satisfy "loves anyone" and deliver you to "happy." The problem with (E) is that it has "Kind" in the necessary. Remember, satisfying the necessary condition has no effect on the sufficient condition.