Student Question:

How does “even a physically benign....” in the last sentence read as “whether or not it is a physically benign..”? Thank you!

Tutor Answer:

Good question! The last sentence is emphasizing how inspiring revulsion is a sufficient condition for a monster to be horrific. The phrase "even a physically benign monster" merely tells us that there is no exception to this rule if the monster is physically benign. So the rule (inspires revulsion -> horrific) applies for monsters that are physically benign. And it applies to monsters that are NOT physically benign. That's the equivalent of "whether or not it is physically benign."

This might be more accessible if we use an analogy. Imagine I make an claim: "Even violent criminal defendants are entitled to a court-appointed attorney if they cannot afford one."

I'm providing a conditional rule: Cannot afford an attorney -> entitled to a court-appointed attorney (just like the above rule inspires revulsion -> horrific). This applies to all criminal defendants (just like the rule applies to all monsters). And it applies whether the defendants are violent or not (just like the rule applies whether the monster is physically benign or not).

Student Question:

In LR, should we treat identifying the “main point” versus “main conclusion” as two different tasks? i.e. do main point questions usually have ACs that are a little more paraphrased, broader, etc. than questions that specifically ask for the main conclusion?

Tutor Answer:

Great question! We can think about this question in a couple different ways. First, we're asked which answer choice "most accurately restates the main point," so even if the answer choice includes some information that is not explicitly stated in the conclusion, it is still the best choice because it is more accurate than all the other choices. It elaborates on what the author means by "bound to mislead" and what kind of "qualification" would be necessary.

Second, you're right to note the distinction between "main point" and "main conclusion." It's rare for an LR question to ask about a "main point" rather than a "main conclusion." When it does happen, the answer choice is sometimes a more traditional, narrow "main conclusion," and other times it is slightly broader, like in this case.

Student Question:

I wanted to ask if anyone could help me understand how the sufficient and necessary relationships work for this argument? I got the conditionals down, but I'm trying to understand what it means for something to be sufficient or necessary for something else.

1. From my understanding, the conditionals are humorous --> attention and message, effective --> message, and conclusion effective --> humorous

2. For the first conditional, am I supposed to understand this as like something being humorous is enough/sufficient for it attracting attention and conveying a message, but attention and message is not necessary for something to be humorous? and for the other conditional, would it be understood as if something is effective, it it enough to convey a message, but the act of a message being conveyed is not necessary for it being effective? (this is where I get very confused)

3. I can usually get the conditionals right but deep down I don't fully understand what their relationships mean

Tutor Answer:

Good question! Yes, your diagrams are basically right.

P1: humorous -> attention and message

P2: effective -> message

C: effective -> humorous

For the first conditional (Premise 1), yes, you can understand it as saying "being humorous is enough/sufficient for it attracting attention and conveying a message." But the rest of your statement is not correct. Saying X is sufficient for Y is equivalent to saying Y is necessary for X. So the first conditional equivalently tells us that "attracting attention and conveying a message" are necessary for being humorous.

Why do necessary and sufficient conditions work like this? Let's use a different example as an illustration. If I tell you that living in New York is a sufficient condition for living in the United States, that means that living in the United States is necessary to living in New York. Because if you didn't live in the US, you certainly couldn't live in New York.

Similarly, if being an attorney is a sufficient condition for passing the bar exam, that means that if I tell you "X person" is an attorney, I can guarantee that X person passed the bar. Equivalently, passing the bar is necessary to being an attorney. The lessons in the foundations curriculum can help illustrate this concept with more examples.

Moving on to the second conditional, yes, if something is effective, it is enough/sufficient to say it conveys a message. Again, however, the rest of your explanation is incorrect. Conveying a message is necessary to being effective. That's almost a word-for-word match with our stimulus: "for an advertisement to be effective it must convey its message."

The flaw in the argument is that it implicitly flips around the sufficient and necessary conditions in P1. If P1 were written as message -> humorous, then you could chain together effective -> message -> humorous and end up with the conclusion effective -> humorous. But that's not what P1 actually says, and that's why this argument is flawed, as answer choice A points out.

Student Question:

I initially chose E, and I can see now with the question we’re trying to answer how it’s wrong. I am however, confused about identifying the confusing phenomena itself. Isn’t it common knowledge that some people will exhibit symptoms from whatever vaccine they get? For example, people who get the flu shot sometimes get fevers and chills, and with the Covid shot some people got really bad symptoms - it’s just how vaccines work. Under the assumption that vaccines should NOT cause symptoms, D is obviously the correct answer. I’m still a little confused on when we should and shouldn’t be making “reasonable” assumptions on the LSAT.

Tutor Answer:

Good question! With a resolve, reconcile, explain (RRE) question, we merely want to identify one way to reconcile two apparently inconsistent phenomena. There might be many ways to reconcile these two observations:

(1) Some people in the experimental and control group exhibited hepatitis A symptoms

(2) the vaccine is completely effective in preventing hepatitis A infection

One way could be what you suggested: getting the vaccine can give some people symptoms of the disease. That could certainly be a correct answer choice if it were present here.

Another way could be that the "symptoms of hepatitis A" that some of the experimental group participants experienced were generic enough to be caused by another disease. We don't have to import knowledge from outside, but let's say that the symptoms are fever and nausea. I'm sure there are many different diseases that could cause these symptoms.

Yet another way to resolve this apparent discrepancy would be that the vaccinated people who exhibited symptoms were infected with the virus before being vaccinated. That's answer choice D. It's the only one of the available answer choices that helps to resolve the apparent paradox, but it's not the only hypothetical way to resolve it.

Note that answer choice D doesn't require us to assume that vaccines should not cause any symptoms. It's consistent with either the vaccines sometimes causing symptoms or the vaccines never causing symptoms. With these questions, we just want to be open to different explanations and not make any assumptions. And if you come across an RRE question where the two facts don't seem contradictory to you based on your knowledge, just consider your own resolution of the apparent contradiction to be one possible answer choice but not the definitive one.

Student Question:

I’m confused about answer choice D. I got this wrong. First, I translated Choice D into lawgic through these steps 1) “ / ( /Intelligent → Wise)” 2) “Intelligent → Not Wise”. I took these steps because I know that the “at least one” disjunction type is represented as “/A → B”. I then distributed the “No one” negation from the stimulus to each variable to get A and / B.

But this is different than the non-lawgic representation using “and”/ “or”. If I translate it that way I can see that “Not (Intelligent or Wise)” turns into / Intelligent and /Wise. Why is the lawgic diagram form giving me a different result than plain english “and/or”

Tutor Answer:

Answer choice D simply says that no one is wise and no one is intelligent. It would be wrong to represent it as you did. The translation /X -> Y only works when you have a phrase like "Everyone is either X or Y." The word "or" doesn't work the same way when you have a phrase like "No one is either wise or intelligence." Nor could you represent "No one is" by adding a slash in front of (/Intelligent -> Wise).

The right way to think about this is with De Morgan's Rules. You can represent "No one is either wise or intelligent" as / (Wise or intelligence). You can "distribute" the slash into the parentheses and switch "or" for "and," which gives you /Wise AND /intelligence.

Student Question:

I am still having a hard time understanding the breakdown of the logic for the answer choices especially C and E

Tutor Answer:

With Must Be True Questions, it's usually best to prephrase an answer choice just based on the stimulus. That way, you have an idea of what you're looking for rather than independently evaluating each answer choice. This is especially helpful when a stimulus involves conditional reasoning and could benefit from diagramming like this one.

We can diagram the stimulus as the following:

Needs more sweepings more than once a month -> qualified for interim sweepings

Qualified for interim sweepings -> interim sweeping requests done immediately

From these statements, you can logically infer answer choice D.

Let's look at answer choice C to see if it logically follows. We can diagram it as follows:

/qualified neighborhood -> /swept more than once a month

There's nothing in the stimulus that tells us this. We know that streets in a qualified neighborhood will be swept more than once a month, but we can't simply negate both the sufficient and necessary conditions. That would be a version of a sufficient-necessary confusion. Maybe there are unqualified neighborhoods that will receive extra cleanings, we just don't know.

For answer choice E, it's very similar to answer choice C, and could also be diagrammed as /qualified neighborhood -> /swept more than once a month. Again, it commits the same sufficient-necessary confusion as answer choice E. The phrase "even if the neighborhood request it" doesn't add anything to the diagram; it just clarifies that the neighborhood request wouldn't constitute an exception to this rule.

Student Question:

I just wanted to solidify my understanding of why B) is correct. I translated it as /harm than good -→ rely on scientific valid info, and if this wasn’t true i.e if we were to negate that would ruin the argument, correct? which is why it is the right answer? also would the negated form be harm than good —→ rely on scientific valid info?

Tutor Answer:

Let's start with the diagram. The phrase "harm than good" doesn't mean anything on its own, so let's instead use "likely do more harm than good."

You can properly diagram answer choice B as: /likely do more harm than good -> rely on scientifically valid info. Equivalently, in contrapositive form, /rely on scientifically valid info -> likely do more harm than good

We want to be careful about negating entire conditional relationships, as compared to merely negating one condition in the conditional relationship. Negating a conditional relationship means "It is not true that this conditional relationship always holds." If we negate the relationship, then we can obtain the sufficient condition without triggering the necessary condition. In diagram form, /likely do more harm than good <-some-> /rely on scientifically valid info. This video explains negating conditional relationships in greater detail.

The stimulus depends on the relationship /rely on scientifically valid info -> likely do more harm than good. If we negate this ansewr choice, so that relationship isn't always true, then people can fail to rely on valid info and still be unlikely to do themselves more harm than good. And in that case, the whole argument falls apart.

Student Question:

I do not understand why the conclusion is the conclusion. From what I can gather it is an intermediate conclusion. It seems like the entire stimulus is trying to justify why the first sentence is true.

Tutor Answer:

Good question! The first sentence is context, not a conclusion, which would have to be supported by the evidence that comes after it. To support a conclusion "The more modern archaeologists learn about Mayan civilization, the better they understand its intellectual achievements," you would want support about how modern archaeologists used to have a poor understanding of the Mayan civilization's intellectual achievements, but now that they have learned more, they have a better understanding. But that's not what the stimulus is about; it's not trying to demonstrate the claim that "the more modern archaeologists learn about Mayan civilization, the better they understand its intellectual achievements."

Instead, the opening sentence just provides context that isn't actual supporting anything else or receiving support itself. The real argument comes later. You can see how "We know this from the fact that the writings of the Mayan religious scribes exhibit a high degree of mathematical competence" is meant as direct support for "The people in general seem to have had a strong grasp of sophisticated mathematical concepts." The flaw here is identified by answer choice B; just because the Mayan religious scribes were mathematically skilled, doesn't mean the people in general were.

Note, even if you thought "the people in general seem to have had a strong grasp of sophisticated mathematical concepts" was merely an intermediate conclusion, you could still get this question correct. A flaw in the deduction from premises to an intermediate conclusion is a flaw just as much as a flawed deduction from premises to a conclusion of from an intermediate conclusion to a main conclusion.

Student Question:

I’m confused with why answer choices D won’t trigger the contrapositive of “one does so in hope or expectation of benefiting someone other than oneself” condition. I thought the contrapositive would look like “one criticize in hope or expect of benefiting oneself” In this case, won’t Jarrett hoping to gain prestige by criticizing Ostertag trigger the contrapositive and result in the conclusion that Jarrett should not criticize? What’s wrong with my contrapositive? Why can’t I contrapose in that way?

Tutor Answer:

It looks like you are getting confused about what a contrapositive is and how to use them. You can't take the contrapositive of a single condition by itself. You have to take the contrapositive of an entire logical relationship, with a sufficient and necessary condition.

Here, we have a logical relationship expressed in the principle: "One should criticize the works or actions of another person only if the criticism will not seriously harm the person criticized and one does so in the hope or expectation of benefiting someone other than oneself."

We can diagram this out to help us understand it:

Should criticize others' work/actions -> /criticism seriously harms the person criticized AND criticism is done in hope or expectation of benefiting someone other than oneself

This is a logical relationship with one sufficient condition and two, joint necessary conditions. To take the contrapositive of any relationship, we have to "flip and negate." In other words, flip the necessary and sufficient conditions, and negate each condition. Since this relationship has an "and," we also have to add a step. Following De Morgan's Rules, we switch the "and" for an "or."

So the correct contrapositive is:

Criticism seriously harms the person criticized OR /criticism is done in hope or expectation of benefiting someone other than oneself -> /Should criticize others' work/actions

It looks like you're incorrectly negating "criticism is done in hope or expectation of benefiting someone other than oneself." The right way to negate this is simply "criticism is NOT done in hope or expectation of benefitting someone other than oneself." It's perfectly possible for someone to hope/expect to benefit both herself and another person. So answer choice (D), "Jarrett hoped to gain prestige by criticizing Ostertag," doesn't guarantee that Jarrett wasn't also hoping/expecting to help a third party. For example, maybe she hoped to gain prestige for herself and also hoped to instruct other classmates on how to write a better essay (even if this hope was ultimately mistaken, as the stimulus tells us).

Student Question:

The stimulus says “all the unpleasant consequences of the policies.” I understand the last sentence talks about a very positive political agenda, but how do we know whether or not the unpleasant consequences outweigh the positivity of the political agenda he implements? I initially chose A but decided not to go with it because I wasn’t sure whether or not his policies would result in good consequences because of the unpleasant consequence phrase.

Tutor Answer:

Good question! The first sentence says that the policies have multiple "unpleasant consequences." It doesn't clarify at all how these negative consequences will balance out against the positive consequences. But the last sentence does tell us how the consequences of the candidate's policies (i.e., his political agenda) balance out on net. It says the "political agenda ... is very positive," which must mean that the positives outweigh the negatives. If the last sentence simply said the agenda "has many positive consequences" or something like that, we wouldn't know how to weigh the net effects. But since it says it's very positive, that describes the agenda overall, on net.

Aside from this, the ethically questionable act in question is failing to reveal the unpleasant consequences, and the direct "good consequence" of this is getting the candidate elected, which is "vitally important" to "help implement a political agenda that is very positive." So even if we didn't know how the consequences came out (positive or negative), this answer choice could still strengthen the argument. There's nothing in the answer choice that says the good consequences have to outweigh certain bad consequences to be a justification for some ethically questionable acts.

Student Question:

I am simply having the worst time understanding this question. I don’t get why the answer is the one that it is. I do not see how it strengthens the argument.

Tutor Answer:

This is definitely a tricky one! To begin with, we want to recognize the premises as a correlation between business travel and chronic insomnia, plus a potential causal mechanism suggesting how business travel could be causing the chronic insomnia. Without that causal mechanism, we might ask ourselves whether the causation runs in the opposite direction (chronic insomnia causes business people to do more international travel), or we might ask about other third variables that could explain the correlation. Together, the correlation and proposed causal mechanism lead to the conclusion that the stresses of international travel causes insomnia.

Answer choice C further rules out the alternative hypothesis that chronic insomnia causes business people to do more international travel. The wording is difficult to parse, but it says that businesspeople with insomnia are "no more likely" than those without insomnia "to accept international travel assignments." By ruling out an alternative hypothesis of reverse causation, we strengthen the argument for causation to go from international travel (via stress) to insomnia. It may be helpful to review this module on reverse causation and other explanations for correlation for questions like this one.

Student Question:

I don't understand the stimulus or the answer choices, will you explain like I’m 5?

Tutor Answer:

Of course! For a Most Strongly Supported question, we don't have an argument in the stimulus. We just have a list of claims that we have to treat as true. Our job is to figure out if there is anything we can logically infer when we consider these claims together.

The stimulus is talking about archaeologists analyzing plant remains from a very old site. They're trying to figure out if the plants were cultivated (i.e. planted and grown in a controlled way by humans on a farm) or just picked from the wild.

If the plants were cultivated, then the people at this site must have been using agriculture (farming) way before any other known agricultural communities. Basically, archaeologists used to think agriculture was discovered in Year X at site ABC, but this site they're examining was occupied 5000 years before Year X.

If the plants were wild, on the other hand, then the people at this site were eating more types of wild plants than any other people at that time.

Now let's think about what we can infer. We don't have any info that tells us whether the plants were wild or cultivated. But in either case, the people at this site were using plants in a way that no others were using it at that time, since either they were eating more types of wild plants, or they were the first to discover farming.

The other answer choices are not supported. The second most-chosen option is D: "If the people who occupied the site discovered agriculture thousands of years before people anywhere else are known to have done so, then there are remains of cultivated plants at the site."

This results from a sufficient-necessary confusion. In the stimulus, the sufficient condition is "If the plants were cultivated." The necessary condition is "then the people who occupied the site discovered agriculture thousands of years before any other people are known to have done so." We can't simply flip the "if" and "then" around, which is what answer choice D is doing.

Answer choice A is also chosen by some test takers, but there's simply no information in the stimulus to suggest the archaeologists will be able to find out whether the plants were cultivated or wild. Maybe it will remain a mystery for ever.

Student Question:

So, doing this question for a second time, I still got tripped up on answer choice D because I did not realize they had quantified the amount she disagrees with, and that means that she disagrees with them all the same, so she could not vote. I got tripped up on the “should not vote for any candidate” and didn’t connect 3=all the same. My main question is, how can I not misread that part? I misread the question, but is there a tip to pay attention to something specific? How should I read this differently, and what should I be looking out for in other questions as well to make sure I do not misread like this again?

Tutor Answer:

Good question! Whenever you see absolute vs. relative language in a stimulus, you should pay careful attention to it, since the answer on the test might hinge on you getting mixed up. There are many ways this could appear. 

For example, if you have a stimulus that says “Joe’s pizza tastes better than Emily’s pizza,” you could have a wrong must-be-true answer choice along the lines of “Joe’s pizza is good.” Alternatively, the stimulus could say “Mike’s pizza is expensive,” and a wrong MBT answer choice might be “Mike’s pizza is more expensive than Jonathan’s pizza.”

So in this case, when the stimulus says in the first sentence, “at least one issue,” make sure to note that, and then be similarly vigilant when the stimulus later says “It is acceptable for me to vote for a candidate whose opinions differ from mine on at least one issue important to me whenever I disagree with each of the other candidates on even more such issues.”

You’ll also give yourself a better chance of getting questions like this right if you diagram. The stimulus was quite complicated in this case, with lots of conditional reasoning, so it’s smart to put everything on paper. Start by translating the relevant sentences into diagrams. Then manipulate the diagrams by taking contrapositives and/or chaining them together, so you end up with everything in one diagram. Finally, you should prephrase the right answer choice by making a logical inference from your diagram. That way, you’ll know what to expect in the answer choices and don’t have to evaluate each one on its own terms, which makes it easier to fall for traps and miss the right choice.

Student Question:

I am curious as to why D is correct when there is no implicit or explicit mention of Mexican American (MA) lit’s narrative structure in the passage? I do know there is mention of MA lit being thematically rich, so answer D is at least partially supported. I understand the other answer choices are wrong because they do not have enough support in the passage , but when I pick an answer, I don't want to pick an answer that is the least wrong. I want to be sure of the correct answer. I don't feel sure of D. For other similar questions where the correct answer isn't fully supported/partially supported, How can I justify the correct answer?

Tutor Answer:

Good question! The author does include a brief reference to the narrative structure of Mexican American literature in the second paragraph: "Many Mexican Americans are only a generation away from the mostly agrarian culture of their ancestors, and the work of most Mexican American writers shows evidence of heavy influence from this culture. Their novels are often simple in structure..."

This line suggests that MA literature isn't all that special when it comes to structure. Additionally, the fact that there's only one reference to the structure, and the fact that it's so cursory, implies that the author doesn't think MA literature's narrative structure is all that noteworthy compared to its thematic content, which the author discusses at length.

Student Question:

I am stuck between B & C on this question. So the author ultimately concludes that psychologists are wrong to assert that deep empathy (which is defined as understanding motivations) is the best way to gain understanding because it is impossible to understand motivations and thus to accomplish deep empathy. 

To me, this seems valid, as something can’t be the best if it is not possible, but the explanation (I think) suggests this conclusion is wrong. Can you elaborate on why this is wrong or invalid? Separately, JY seems to suggest in the video explanation that AC B is wrong because it doesn’t appear to assume anything (4 min 10 s), but the author states “But lets suppose they (ref to the psychologists) are right” which to me sounds like an assumption as you could word it “But lets assume they are right” with no functional difference. The author then goes on to say that they (ref to the psychologists) are wrong, which seems to result in a contradiction. As a result, AC B appears to be a valid criticism. I don’t doubt the validity of AC C; the author does do that, but I struggle to determine which is worse, especially given my confusion about why the argument is invalid in the first place.

Tutor Answer:

Good question! 

The correct answer to a flaw question is something that (1) the argument actually does and (2) is logically invalid.

The author of this argument is attempting to use a technique called proof by contradiction. For the sake of argument, she’s saying for the moment, let’s suppose the psychologists are right. She then says that if we took the psychologists’ argument to be true, then there would be no way at all to achieve understanding, and this would contradict something else that we know to be true (“Obviously one can understand other people”). 

This is a valid technique, and there’s nothing wrong with it in principle. The problem is the author misunderstands the implications of the psychologists’ view by confusing “the best” with the “only” method to understand others, as answer choice (C) says.

Answer choice (B) says that the author “assumes something that it later denies, resulting in a contradiction.” The author isn’t making an assumption in the traditional sense, like we talk about assumptions as unstated premises in other stimuli. In this case, she’s not actually accepting the psychologists’ theory, she’s just asking if we hypothetically accepted it, what would happen?. So that’s why J.Y. said the author isn’t assuming anything. And as I mentioned in the last paragraph, there’s nothing wrong with a proof by contradiction argument, so it’s not a flaw.

@AmandaTesar6 We can see why E is the correct answer by using the negation test in this question.

If we negate E, we get, "The time required to teach preventive medicine thoroughly is NOT greater than one hour for every ten that are now spent teaching curative medicine."

If this is the case, then medical schools are already spending enough time to thoroughly teach preventative medicine. We know from the stimulus that "doctors' use of the techniques of preventative medicine cut down medical costs greatly," and if the current teaching model is already teaching these doctors the techniques thoroughly, there's no more room in the argument of the stimulus for more teaching to achieve cost reductions.

Thus, the argument breaks down, and E must be a necessary assumption.

You're right that it's theoretically possible for spending more time on preventative medicine to achieve cost reductions, but we would need another premise to get there, and that premise isn't present here.

Student Question:

When it says “fails to establish” does that mean in the premises? because I didn’t pick it because I was like we they did say that in the conclusion. But if I’m supposed to think of it in terms of the premises then yes it was not established there. I think im just confused on what the answer choice is applying too. thank you

Tutor Answer:

Good question! Yes, "fail to establish" X means that (1) X wasn't in the premises and (2) you can't properly derive X from the premises. If the premises don't add up to a conclusion, that means the argument failed to establish a conclusion.

Student Question:

Could you please explain E?

Tutor Answer:

Great question! If the asteroid-impact theory fully explained the extinction of the dinosaurs, then we'd expect all the dinosaurs to die out shortly after the asteroid impact, when the layer of extraterrestrial dust settled on the Earth's surface.

Answer choice E suggests a more gradual process with more causes than just the asteroid impact. The fossils below the extraterrestrial dust indicate that the number of dinosaur species dropped a lot, from 35 to 13, "over time" before the asteroid hit. And then after the asteroid hit and the layer of extraterrestrial dust was laid down, the number of dinosaur species kept falling, from 13 to 5.

This evidence suggests that there was another cause, maybe working together with the asteroid impact, that was causing the number of dinosaur species to decrease over time before and after the asteroid impact.

Student Question:

I cannot see why C isn’t the correct answer. Kevin does a good job explaining that the error is misidentifying a casual chain, and that increased food production does not then lead to agricultural advances. But if those ideas are unrelated, why does the author link them right together with the word “yet”? It seems like the author is implying they are related

Tutor Answer:

Good question! The author starts by conceding that Malthus’ prediction hasn’t yet come true: “human food-producing capacity has increased more rapidly than human population.”

The reason he starts the next sentence with “Yet” is because that’s where his own argument begins. He’s saying despite this concession, he’s about to argue that Malthus is (or will eventually be) right. The rest of the sentence after “yet” isn’t directly contradicting the fact that food-producing capacity has outpaced population growth, but it is evidence for the conclusion “Therefore, Malthus's prediction that insufficient food will doom humanity to war, pestilence, and famine will likely be proven correct in the future.”

Here’s a similar argument where this distinction might be a little more clear. “Contrary to Paul’s prediction, Emily hasn’t come to any of Andrew’s monthly dinner parties so far. Yet, next week, Emily will have a lot more free time than she’s had over the last year. Therefore, Paul’s prediction that Emily will come to one of Andrew’s dinner parties will likely be proven correct in the future.”

Student Question:

While I see why AC B is accurate, I ultimately chose AC E because I thought it was the most complete description of the author’s attitude towards Drescher. I based this conclusion on an analysis of two statements in the passage: “Seymour Drescher provides a more balanced view.” (First sentence of paragraph 2), and: “...Drescher does not finally explain how...” (Last sentence of paragraph 2). I took these statements together to imply that the author believes Drescher’s view appears reasonable on first glance, but that in reality, it ultimately falls short; in other words, that the author believes Drescher’s view to be superficially convincing. Can you please explain where my reasoning went wrong here?

Tutor Answer:

Good question! We're specifically concerned with what the author thinks about "Drescher's presentation of British traditions concerning liberty," so we want to look more narrowly than what the author thinks about Drescher's views more generally. Note in the third paragraph that the author refers to Drescher's views on this specific question as an "idealization."

Even if we look at everything the author has to say about Drescher's views, we don't find support for answer choice E. The phrase about Drescher having "a more balanced view" doesn't imply that it's convincing,

Imagine we have a passage about philosophers: "Smith thinks that there are no circumstances where it's morally permitted to lie. Jones provides a more balanced view; she thinks lying is morally permitted in certain cases. But Jones is wrong; Smith has a stronger argument."

In this passage, just like in the real passage, "a more balanced view" doesn't imply anything about whether a given argument is superficially convincing.

@devientmelody That's right! The conclusions are identical between A and E. The sole difference between A and E is in the "most" premise.

Student Question:

Can I get a drawn out version of the explanation for this?

Tutor Answer:

Sure! This is a parallel reasoning question, so we want to start by diagramming the stimulus and understand the logical relationships, abstracting from the specific content about sales proposals.

We can diagram it as follows: 

P1: Juarez thinks: /rewritten -> rejected

P2: Juarez’s opinion is very reliable (so we can treat “/rewritten -> rejected” as reliable)

P3: /rewritten

Conclusion: rejected

Abstracting from this:

P1: X thinks: A -> B

P2: X is reliable

P3: A

Conclusion: Probably B

Answer choice C provides what we’re looking for. It’s the same logical structure, just in a different order, which is perfectly ok for a parallel reasoning answer choice.

Leading science journal (X) says if data are accurate (A), then medication is safe (B)

In other words, P1: X thinks: A -> B

“Thus, the medication is probably safe”

In other words: Conclusion: Probably B

“For the science journal is rarely wrong about such matters

In other words, P2: X is reliable

“The company’s data are accurate”

In other words, P3: A

Student Question: 

For the last sentence in the stimulus, I agree with JY’s video diagram: “narration” is a necessary condition to “enable understanding.” No narration, no enable understanding. 

When I completed this question live, and even now in review, my thought process is the same: the negation of C says that “the art of still photography IS narrative.” 

So, connecting this back to our diagram, we fulfill a necessary condition to “enable understanding.” However, fulfilling a necessary condition does not mean this “enables understanding,” and to think otherwise would be a cookie-cutter sufficient-necessary flaw. Is this a flawed question, or am I going wrong somewhere in my rationale? Thanks!

Tutor Answer:

Good question! It looks like you might be confusing the negation test for necessary assumptions with making proper inferences involving necessary and sufficient conditions.

The last sentence in the stimulus is properly diagrammed as:

enable us to understand -> narrate

OR in contrapositive form: /narrate -> /enable us to understand

We are looking for a gap to help us get from that premise to the conclusion, that still photography cannot enable us to understand the world. The big gap that exists here is between still photography and narrative. 

If we add in the assumption that still photography is not narrative, then we get:

still photography -> /narrate -> /enable us to understand

Which properly yields the conclusion:

still photography -> /enable us to understand

So (C) happens to be a sufficient assumption. But we’re concerned about whether it’s a necessary assumption. To figure this out, we can use the negation test. The negation is “the art of still photography is narrative,” and you’re absolutely right, that doesn’t prove the negation of the conclusion (that the art of photography can enable us to understand the world). But it still destroys the argument, because it makes the premises irrelevant and leaves the conclusion totally unsupported. That’s the bar for the negation test.

Student Question:

I'm confused at people saying that there's no such "fact" that D is referring to. The fact is that this new theory cannot distinguish between sibling species that would otherwise be distinguished. I think the bigger reason for why this doesn't work is because showing a theory to be incompatible with one fact is absolutely a valid reason to reject a theory, but the argument rejects the theory without properly demonstrating why this incompatibility is an issue, hence the presupposition.

Tutor Answer:

Good question! Answer choice describes the premise as “a single fact that is incompatible with a theory.” So the fact itself can’t be “This new theory cannot distinguish between sibling species that would otherwise be distinguished.”

Otherwise you’d be saying “The fact that ‘this new theory cannot distinguish between sibling species that would otherwise be distinguished’ is incompatible with a theory,” and that doesn’t make any sense.

Also, the “fact” that you just quoted is also inaccurate even in isolation. We have no reason to think either the typological theory or the mainstream theory is new. And the key to this question is that there could be more than two theories, so it doesn’t make sense to say “otherwise.”

If we take the fact to be that sibling species exist, then that wouldn’t be incompatible with the theory either. So the explanation is correct that there is no fact that is incompatible with typological theory.

Student Question:

I chose the incorrect answer D (draws a conclusion about the popularity of a series based on a comparison with other, dissimilar events) because I thought that the "events" it was talking about was using the definition of a "thing" instead of "events" like "concerts." If the answer choice was using the “thing” definition of the word “events,” then D would be correct, would it not? The concert promoter is comparing sales of t-shirts and other memorabilia instead (which are the “other, dissimilar events”) instead of the actual popular appeal of the concert series.

Tutor Answer:

“Events” cannot be physical “things.” Events have a beginning and ending, they take place in time. “T-shirts and other memorabilia” are physical objects. Memorabilia are objects like mugs, posters, hats, autographed photos, props, etc. So it doesn’t make any sense to say “if the answer choice was using the ‘thing’ definition of the word ‘events,’” because there is no “thing” definition of that word that would encapsulate t-shirts and memorabilia under the umbrella category of events.