LSAT 121 – Section 4 – Question 15

LSAT 121 - Section 4 - Question 15

December 2005

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Request new explanation

Target time: 1:11

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT121 S4 Q15
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
14%
159
B
0%
158
C
2%
157
D
79%
164
E
4%
158
137
148
159
 +Medium 146.544 +SubsectionMedium

Trustee: The recent exhibit at the art museum was extensively covered by the local media, and this coverage seems to have contributed to the record-breaking attendance it drew. If the attendance at the exhibit had been low, the museum would have gone bankrupt and closed permanently, so the museum could not have remained open had it not been for the coverage from the local media.

A
confuses a necessary condition for the museum’s remaining open with a sufficient condition for the museum’s remaining open
The only conditional relationship in the trustee’s argument is between “low attendance” and “going bankrupt and closing permanently.” We don’t have a necessary condition for the museum’s remaining open, nor does the trustee confuse such a condition with a sufficient condition.
B
takes for granted that no previous exhibit at the museum had received such extensive media coverage
The trustee claims that media coverage likely helped boost this exhibit's record attendance, but he doesn't assume that no other exhibit has ever gotten as much media coverage.
C
takes for granted that most people who read articles about the exhibit also attended the exhibit
The trustee thinks that local media coverage contributed to the exhibit’s record-breaking attendance, but he doesn’t assume that most people who read articles about the exhibit also attended it. We don’t even know if the “local media” was in the form of articles at all.
D
fails to address the possibility that the exhibit would have drawn enough visitors to prevent bankruptcy even without media coverage
The exhibit might have had enough visitors to stay open even without media coverage. Just because the media coverage likely helped draw record attendance doesn’t mean that the exhibit would have had low attendance— and thus closed— without it.
E
presupposes the very conclusion that it is trying to prove
This is the cookie-cutter flaw of circular reasoning, where the author’s conclusion simply restates a premise. The trustee doesn’t make this mistake; his premises and conclusion are distinct.

This is a pretty tough question. We're prone to understand the argument incorrectly.

The conclusion states that the museum's continued existence depended on the coverage from the local media. In other words, the local media's coverage was a necessary condition for the museum's being still open and in business.

Fair enough. Why should we believe this? One premise says that if there was low attendance at the recent exhibit then the museum would have closed. Okay, good. This means that a necessary condition of the museum staying open is medium-to-high level attendance at the recent exhibit.

Now, in order for the conclusion to follow, we simply need to show that coverage from the local media was the only thing responsible for medium-to-high level attendance.

Does the remaining premises show that? No. It says that local media coverage existed. It also says that local media coverage seems to have contributed to attendance. In other words, it seems to have been a causal factor.

Seems to have contributed? Did it contribute or not? Was it a causal factor or not? We don't know.

That's mistake #1.

Correcting for it, the premise still isn't good enough. The corrected version says that local media coverage contributed to attendance. We we needed it to say that local media coverage was the necessary cause for medium-to-high level attendance. Otherwise, why would the museum's existence depend on it? That's mistake #2.

As for (A), the "necessary condition" it's referring to is "medium-to-high level attendance at the recent exhibit." But the argument never mistook that for a sufficient condition. Did you?

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 121 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply