This is a sufficient assumption question because of the question stem: “Which one of the following, if established, would help justify…” Note that there are two speakers; we’re specifically focused on validating Oscar’s argument.
Sufficient assumption questions tend to be very formal. We’re looking for a rule that would 100% validate the conclusion, specifically by bridging the premise and conclusion through the rule. Not only are we extrapolating the rule from our argument, but we’re also using that rule to render the argument “valid.” The way to prephrase our answer choice is by tying our premises and conclusion together into a rule: “If [premise] → then [conclusion].”
Oscar’s argument is given first. He’s being accused of plagiarizing the work of Myers but says it is unwarranted. What reason does he give for this? Why should we believe him? He first gives a concession: he used Myer’s work without attribution. Even though this is the case, he didn’t plagiarize because Myer gave him permission for this. So, the conclusion of Oscar’s argument is that the accusation that he’s guilty of plagiarism is unwarranted, and his premise is that he got permission in private correspondence to do use Myer’s work without attribution.
Millie’s argument is basically trying to weaken Oscar’s argument. We know this stimulus is for two different questions, so it’s like that question 6 has something to do with both of the speakers. On the older LSAT, it was very common for the test to give one stimulus for two different questions; this doesn’t happen anymore. We can basically ignore Millie’s claim because we’re trying to validate Oscar’s position. If you do end up reading it, the position Millie takes uncovers a useful implicit assumption that Oscar is making.
Back to the Oscar’s argument: does getting permission from the author to use their work without attribution exclude you from plagiarism? Do we know this from the information in our stimulus? No! This is the implicit assumption that Oscar is making. (This also happens to be the implicit assumption that Millie targets to weaken Oscar’s position). In order for this conclusion to be true, our rule would need to look something like “If I get permission in personal/private correspondence from the author to use their work without attribute, then I’m not guilty of plagiarizing.”
Answer Choice (A) This is one of the ways in which LSAT will routinely trick you – switching the sufficient and necessary conditions. Another way the LSAT will trick you is by putting the sufficient condition later in the sentence and putting the necessary condition first. Notice the “If” later on in the sentence; everything after that is our sufficient condition. With our rule, the direction of the conditional matters. This answer choice has “no right to quote” in the necessary condition, but we want “right to quote” or “not plagiarism.” We can also look at the sufficient condition: we’re looking for getting permission and our answer choice says, “the author hasn’t grant author any right.” This is out.
Answer Choice (B) This is another conditional in which the LSAT has put the sufficient condition later on in the sentence. Rearranged, it reads: “If the quote is more than a few sentences long, the writer of an article must attribute the text.” We can’t even satisfy the sufficient condition to trigger the conditional because we do not know how much Oscar pulled from Myer’s book. In addition, even if we could assume it’s just a few sentences, this would actually weaken the argument. This is also out.
Answer Choice (C) This isn’t correct: we start out we a blanket statement: “Plagiarism is never justified.” But then the answer gives us an exception: “but writers are justified in occasionally quoting without attribution…” Stop here. What would it need to be for this to be the correct answer choice? “When the author gives permission to use their writing without attribution.” That would be great! What does our answer choice say? “If the work has not been published.” This does not apply to our stimulus because we don’t know if it hasn’t/has been published.
Correct Answer Choice (D) The necessary condition is presented first, so if we rearrange the order, we get: “if a writer relinquishes their exclusive right to their work, then another author is entitled to quote freely without attribution.” The “relinquished their exclusive right” is a little dramatic and fancy but saying in private correspondence that someone else can use their work without attribution is relinquishing an exclusive right.
Answer Choice (E) “Quote without attribution what they themselves have written” is the problem here. We’re not talking about what Oscar quotes from his own work; he’s quoting another author. This is out.
Here we have a main conclusion question, which we know from the question stem “The main point of the argument is that...”
The argument opens with a common premise indicator, “since,” so I’m expecting that we’ll first be presented with a reason for the conclusion to be true, and then the conclusion will follow. The premise is that grain companies operating internationally are run with the goal of maximizing profits. Knowing this is supposed to make the following claim more likely to be true: that we can’t rely on these companies to make choices with their money that would reform food distribution worldwide. So, Big Grain can’t reliably solve world hunger because they care too much about making money. The first part of that sentence smells like conclusion to me, as we have a reason to believe it. Let’s see if the rest of the argument supports that, or if this claim ends up supporting a more overarching conclusion. The next sentence includes a concession: sure, sometimes big corporations do things that bring about similar economic change. But hey, it’s just a coincidence that this happens because the right motives weren’t there; these companies that did do economic good didn’t actually care about the world, just about making money. And then we’re given a final reason to agree with the initial claim: maximizing profits usually needs a stable, unchanging economic environment. As terrible as this argument is, there’s no doubt that the conclusion was the second part of the first sentence: we just can’t count on Big Grain to save the world from hunger.
Answer Choice (A) repeats the final sentence of the stimulus almost word-for-word, which we already know isn’t the conclusion because we aren’t presented any reason that this must be true; instead it’s given as support for the actual conclusion. Next!
Answer Choice (B) rephrases the second part of the second sentence, which was also just a premise. The author did say that economic change via big business is motivated by profit, but we’re given no reason to believe this and it serves to support the main conclusion. Still searching...
Answer Choice (C) rephrases the first part of the first sentence, which we immediately deemed a premise due to the “since” and its role in supporting the following half of the sentence (the actual main conclusion). Yes, Big Grain cares about making money, but that’s not our conclusion.
Answer Choice (D) was never stated in the argument. We have reason to think the author here actually would say the opposite, that the world’s current food distribution system does need reform. Why would they even bother writing this argument otherwise? Anyways, it’s definitely not the main conclusion.
Correct Answer Choice (E) is right on the money. Like Big Grain, haha. LSAC made this one pretty easy for us by not even bothering to rephrase the second part of the first sentence of the stimulus for AC (E) beyond removing that step about economic changes, so we are that much more confident that this is our answer!
Here we have a Method of Reasoning question, which we know from the question stem: “Millie uses which one of the following argumentative strategies in contesting Oscar’s position?”
After correctly identifying the question type we can use structural analysis to describe the Method of Reasoning used by our speaker. Immediately we should note we have two speakers in our stimulus. That means we need to be on the lookout for two conclusions and two sets of explanations. Oscar begins by telling us they have been recently accused of plagiarism. Oscar concludes this accusation is unwarranted on the grounds that Myers gave Oscar private permission to use the passages Oscar is accused of plagiarizing.
That makes sense depending on your definition of plagiarism. Our second speaker, Millie, points out the assumption in Oscar’s argument about what it means to plagiarize a piece of writing. Millie concludes that Myers is unable to bestow permission for Oscar to plagiarize because plagiarism itself is a type of lie, and permission to lie does not change the fact that Oscar committed plagiarism.
Millie has undermined Oscar’s position in their response by pointing out Oscar’s conclusion only follows if one changes the meaning of plagiarism. If plagiarism simply means to use another’s writing without permission, then Oscar has not committed plagiarism. As pointed out by Millie, having permission from the author does not change the fact Oscar is using another person’s work for the purpose of misleading the audience.
Knowing our correct answer choice will point out Millie’s debate surrounding this definition, we can proceed into answer choice elimination.
Correct Answer Choice (A) This is exactly what we are looking for! This is the only answer choice that correctly points out the reinterpretation of plagiarism created by the second speaker.
Answer Choice (B) This is not descriptively accurate. In order to invoke evidence to show that Oscar did quote this author we would need to be able to point to an exact line in Millie’s argument referring to the text itself.
Answer Choice (C) This answer choice implies the disagreement between Oscar and Millie concerns if Oscar had permission to use the author’s writing. But our stimuli aren’t concerned with whether the author tried to give Oscar permission. Instead, our speakers are concerned with whether or not the author’s permission qualifies Oscar’s work as falling under the umbrella of plagiarism.
Answer Choice (D) In order for this answer choice to be correct, we would need to be able to identify some sort of “theory of rights” introduced in the stimulus. Without a description of that theory or an explanation as to how we know Oscar aligns with it, we can eliminate this answer choice from consideration.
Answer Choice (E) We are not debating the credibility of either speaker. Instead, we are debating the validity of whether an author can rightfully give another permission to use their work without it qualifying as plagiarism.