I can't even express how amazing 7Sage is. Without this, I would have NO chance on the LSAT. I just cannot believe how much effort has been put into this site. It is so well done. THANK YOU.
Ahhhh now that you point out the X and Y thing, I totally see why THAT is questionable reasoning. I had a hard time imagining what "reasoning" was here and didn't realize vacuous had such a strong negative connotation. This is why this curriculum is so helpful!!
I understand that answer choice B is wrong because it says "conclusion that is clearly false" but I had thought that the explanation of monogamous relationships was analogous to the explanation of altruism in the other passage. I thought that passage B was providing a another phenomenon explained by evolutionary psychology to undermine the argument in passage A by showing it doesn't make sense to use the proliferation of genes as an explanation in that analogous case. If I was doing the question, I would have eliminated based off of "conclusion that is clearly false" because it doesn't say if it's true or false (or right or wrong as said in the passage). I just don't see how these two concepts wouldn't be analogous as was said in the explanation.
I see what you're saying. I think there's a difference between (1) criticizing an argument by creating an analogous argument that leads to a false conclusion, and (2) criticizing an argument by directly pointing out its flawed assumption, and illustrating a kind of argument that uses that flawed assumption.
(B) is describing a response where we try to show that someone else's logic leads to an absurd conclusion as a way to undermine the logic. For example:
My friend says that the new jetpack is safe to use because it went through extensive testing before being released to the public. However, using that reasoning, we would have to conclude that the OceanGate submarine that imploded and killed all of its passengers was safe, because it went through extensive testing before being released to the public. (The implicit point is that the fact something went through testing is not sufficient to conclude that the thing is safe.) Here, I created analogous argument to undermine my friend's argument. The purpose of bringing up OceanGate was to show that my friend's assumption was flawed.
But consider this:
There are a lot of people who argue that because something goes through extensive testing, that it must be safe. For example, some people say that adopting an extreme paleo diet is safe because that diet has gone through extensive testing. However, we should be skeptical of arguments based on the assumption that extensive testing implies safety. After all, couldn't the extensive testing reveal that the product is unsafe? Or perhaps the testing is subpar and fails to catch or fix dangerous risks?
Do you see a difference between these two? In the second passage, the author isn't bringing up the extreme paleo diet argument as an analogy to anything else. The purpose is to illustrate a specific example of an argument that is based on the flawed assumption (to help the reader understand the kind of argument that we're discussing). But, the author doesn't use the paleo diet to implicitly criticize the assumption. Rather, the author directly questions the assumption -- not through an analogous argument, but through directly questioning whether testing implies safety.
I think Passage B is more like this second example.
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11 comments
VACUOUS
@MPFerrari Vacuous
I can't even express how amazing 7Sage is. Without this, I would have NO chance on the LSAT. I just cannot believe how much effort has been put into this site. It is so well done. THANK YOU.
Man sucks that I did terrible on the last passage of the curriculum lol
I got too confident and chose D too quickly
exact same thing happened to me, i didn't even read all of E. whoops
Ahhhh now that you point out the X and Y thing, I totally see why THAT is questionable reasoning. I had a hard time imagining what "reasoning" was here and didn't realize vacuous had such a strong negative connotation. This is why this curriculum is so helpful!!
Which PT is this passage taken from?
PT64 Passage 3. Or PT134, Section 4, Passage 3.
I understand that answer choice B is wrong because it says "conclusion that is clearly false" but I had thought that the explanation of monogamous relationships was analogous to the explanation of altruism in the other passage. I thought that passage B was providing a another phenomenon explained by evolutionary psychology to undermine the argument in passage A by showing it doesn't make sense to use the proliferation of genes as an explanation in that analogous case. If I was doing the question, I would have eliminated based off of "conclusion that is clearly false" because it doesn't say if it's true or false (or right or wrong as said in the passage). I just don't see how these two concepts wouldn't be analogous as was said in the explanation.
I see what you're saying. I think there's a difference between (1) criticizing an argument by creating an analogous argument that leads to a false conclusion, and (2) criticizing an argument by directly pointing out its flawed assumption, and illustrating a kind of argument that uses that flawed assumption.
(B) is describing a response where we try to show that someone else's logic leads to an absurd conclusion as a way to undermine the logic. For example:
My friend says that the new jetpack is safe to use because it went through extensive testing before being released to the public. However, using that reasoning, we would have to conclude that the OceanGate submarine that imploded and killed all of its passengers was safe, because it went through extensive testing before being released to the public. (The implicit point is that the fact something went through testing is not sufficient to conclude that the thing is safe.) Here, I created analogous argument to undermine my friend's argument. The purpose of bringing up OceanGate was to show that my friend's assumption was flawed.
But consider this:
There are a lot of people who argue that because something goes through extensive testing, that it must be safe. For example, some people say that adopting an extreme paleo diet is safe because that diet has gone through extensive testing. However, we should be skeptical of arguments based on the assumption that extensive testing implies safety. After all, couldn't the extensive testing reveal that the product is unsafe? Or perhaps the testing is subpar and fails to catch or fix dangerous risks?
Do you see a difference between these two? In the second passage, the author isn't bringing up the extreme paleo diet argument as an analogy to anything else. The purpose is to illustrate a specific example of an argument that is based on the flawed assumption (to help the reader understand the kind of argument that we're discussing). But, the author doesn't use the paleo diet to implicitly criticize the assumption. Rather, the author directly questions the assumption -- not through an analogous argument, but through directly questioning whether testing implies safety.
I think Passage B is more like this second example.