LSAT 102 – Section 3 – Question 01

LSAT 102 - Section 3 - Question 01

June 1998

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT102 S3 Q01
+LR
+Exp
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Rule-Application +RuleApp
A
93%
165
B
1%
164
C
5%
157
D
1%
152
E
0%
155
124
135
146
 +Easier 147.613 +SubsectionMedium

J.Y.’s explanation

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Director of Ace Manufacturing Company: Our management consultant proposes that we reassign staff so that all employees are doing both what they like to do and what they do well. This, she says, will “increase productivity by fully exploiting our available resources.” But Ace Manufacturing has a long-standing commitment not to exploit its workers. Therefore, implementing her recommendations would cause us to violate our own policy.

Summarize Argument
The director of concludes that a consultant’s recommendations for improving productivity by giving employees work that they enjoy and are good at would violate company policy. This is because the consultant says her recommendations will “fully exploit” the company’s workforce resources, and the company’s policy is not to exploit its workers.

Identify and Describe Flaw
This is a cookie-cutter equivocation flaw: the director wrongly takes the term “exploit” to be the same between two different uses. When the consultant talks about “exploiting” the resources of the company, she’s just talking about making the best use of employees’ abilities. The company policy not to “exploit” workers refers to treating employees unfairly, which wouldn’t result from the consultant’s recommendations.

A
failing to distinguish two distinct senses of a key term
The director doesn’t distinguish between two uses of “exploit” that have different meanings in their respective contexts. The director wrongly takes the consultant’s use of “exploit” (optimize resources) to be the same as the company policy’s use of “exploit” (treat unfairly).
B
attempting to defend an action on the ground that it is frequently carried out
The director doesn’t try to defend any action in this argument. There also isn’t any example discussed of an action that is frequently carried out.
C
defining a term by pointing to an atypical example of something to which the term applies
The director doesn’t define any terms here. In fact, the flaw in the director’s argument is a failure to recognize two distinct definitions of the same term, “exploit”.
D
drawing a conclusion that simply restates one of the premises of the argument
The director concludes that the consultant’s recommendation would violate company policy, which is not a premise used earlier in the argument.
E
calling something by a less offensive term than the term that is usually used to name that thing
This argument doesn’t deal with offensive terminology, and the director doesn’t replace any usual terms with different ones.

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LSAT PrepTest 102 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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