LSAT 151 – Section 3 – Question 07

LSAT 151 - Section 3 - Question 07

September 2018

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT151 S3 Q07
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
Fact v. Belief v. Knowledge +FvBvK
A
1%
151
B
1%
146
C
3%
156
D
3%
150
E
91%
162
133
141
148
 +Easier 146.292 +SubsectionMedium

If rational-choice theory is correct, then people act only in ways that they expect will benefit themselves. But this means that rational-choice theory cannot be correct, because plenty of examples exist of people acting in ways that result in no personal benefit whatsoever.

Summarize Argument
The author argues that rational-choice theory is not correct. She supports this by saying that if it were correct, then people would only act in ways that they expect will benefit them, but there are many examples of people acting in ways that do not benefit them.

Identify and Describe Flaw
By showing that many people act in ways that don’t benefit them, the author assumes that she’s negating the necessary condition for rational-choice theory being correct. But in reality, the necessary condition is that people will always act in ways that they expect will benefit them.

It’s possible that people expected to benefit from their actions, even though they didn’t benefit. In this case, the author can’t conclude that rational-choice theory is incorrect.

A
assumes as a premise the contention the argument purports to establish
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of circular reasoning, where the argument’s conclusion simply restates one of its premises. The author doesn’t make this mistake; her premises may not support her conclusion well, but they are distinct from her conclusion.
B
concludes that a theory is false merely on the grounds that the evidence for it is hypothetical
The author does conclude that rational-choice theory is false, but not on the grounds that the evidence for it is hypothetical. Instead, she concludes it’s false based on examples that she believes prove it to be false.
C
takes for granted that people who are acting in ways that are personally beneficial expected that their actions would be personally beneficial
Actually, the author assumes that people who are acting in ways that are not personally beneficial did not expect that their actions would be personally beneficial. (C) has this backwards.
D
presumes, without justification, that examples of people acting in ways that are not personally beneficial greatly outnumber examples of people acting in ways that are personally beneficial
The author never assumes there are more examples of people acting in ways that are not personally beneficial than people acting in ways that are. She just says there are “plenty” of examples of people acting in ways that don’t benefit them, which she thinks disproves the theory.
E
fails to consider that people acting in ways that result in no personal benefit may nonetheless have expected that acting in those ways would produce personal benefit
Just because people sometimes act in ways that don’t benefit them doesn’t mean that those people weren’t expecting to benefit from their actions. If they were, the author can’t conclude that rational-choice theory is incorrect.

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LSAT PrepTest 151 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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