LSAT 121 – Section 1 – Question 21

LSAT 121 - Section 1 - Question 21

December 2005

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT121 S1 Q21
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
A
3%
158
B
92%
164
C
2%
154
D
1%
152
E
3%
156
136
144
152
 +Medium 145.604 +SubsectionMedium

Catmull: Although historians consider themselves to be social scientists, different historians never arrive at the same conclusions about specific events of the past. Thus historians never determine what actually happened; like novelists, they merely create interesting fictional stories about the many different problems that people have faced.

Summarize Argument
Catmull concludes that historians never determine what actually happened in the past. Why? Because different historians always arrive at different conclusions when studying the same events.

Identify and Describe Flaw
Catmull claims that, because historians disagree, they never arrive at the truth. The flaw in his reasoning is that some historians may still have arrived at the truth, even if not all of them have. The fact that they disagree shows that not all of them can be right, but it doesn’t show that all of them are wrong.

A
draws a conclusion that simply restates a claim presented in support of that conclusion
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of circular reasoning; it doesn’t apply here. Catmull’s conclusion is an unwarranted leap from his premise, not a restatement of it.
B
concludes, solely on the basis of the claim that different people have reached different conclusions about a topic, that none of these conclusions is true
Catmull assumes that, because historians disagree about the past, none of their conclusions can be true. He overlooks the possibility that some historians may have accurately determined what happened, even without universal agreement.
C
presumes, without providing justification, that unless historians’ conclusions are objectively true, they have no value whatsoever
Catmull likens historians’ conclusions to fiction, but he doesn’t suggest that this means they have no value whatsoever.
D
bases its conclusion on premises that contradict each other
Catmull’s premises don’t contradict either, so this isn’t the flaw.
E
mistakes a necessary condition for the objective truth of historians’ conclusions for a sufficient condition for the objective truth of those conclusions
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of confusing sufficiency and necessity; it isn’t applicable here because Catmull isn’t using conditional logic.

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LSAT PrepTest 121 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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