PT56.S2.Q20 - Psychologist: Psychotherapists who attempt to provide

akistotle

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-56-section-2-question-20/

I'm having trouble understanding why (C) is wrong in PT56.S2.Q20.

I negated the statement as follows:

It’s not the case that psychotherapy should never be provided in a context in which there is any chance that the therapy might be of less than high quality.
= Psychotherapy can sometimes (or always) be provided in a context in which there is any chance that the therapy might be of less than high quality.

I thought the negation of (C) wrecked the argument because it indicated that psychotherapy can be provided when there is any chance (1%)....Is my negation wrong?

I understand why (E) is better, but I want to fully understand why (C) is wrong.

GrecoRoman

I think it's better to leave the negation at "It’s not the case that psychotherapy should never be provided in a context in which there is any chance that the therapy might be of less than high quality". This can be true and not destroy the argument because maybe there are contexts in which a 1% chance of low quality care is acceptable to the author. We only have a premise where he talks about there being a high chance of low quality care. So we don't need for there to be a 1% chance of low quality care for the premise to lead to the conclusion, though that would be sufficient. We only need for there to be high chance of low quality care for the conclusion to follow. Sorry if I explained this poorly, I will add more if it doesn't make sense.

angelin_ju1101

Hi,

I am not 100% sure whether my explanation would help, but let me try.

When I went back to this question, I was definitely left with choice C and E.

As we always have to choose best choice among all, I decided to compare the two.

To me, C and E were virtually saying the same thing; however, what led me to choose E in the end was the word "context" on choice C.

The word "context" is prone to interpretation and I considered "... that entertain a broad audience" as a manner in which the materials are presented.

Hence, in the end, I reasoned E as a better answer.

Also, this is combined priniciple(support) and NA, so I think negation test would not necessarily be the best method.

JustDoIt

Hi there!

This is really tough to see but for me it comes down to two words in the stimulus: "nearly always." Nearly always indicates that there is a possibility that it is acceptable for this to not occur in some circumstances.

Now let's look at C. C is wayyyyyy to broad! It says "Psychotherapy should never be provided in a context in which there is any chance that the therapy might be less of than high quality." This means that we are going to cover every possible situation that this occurs. Now let's negate it. Sometimes, we can provide psychotherapy despite there being a chance that it will be of less than high quality. This is actually perfectly consistent with our stimulus, which says "satisfying this demand is nearly always incompatible with providing high quality psychological help." Okay so what? The negation is telling us something that we already know and therefore does not wreck the argument, which is why this is wrong.

Another reason C is wrong is because it is basically a sufficient assumption answer choice. The problem is, this is not a sufficient assumption question and we don't need C to be true at all in order to reach our conclusion.

Hope this helps!

akistotle

Thank you all for your comments! I think I understand better now.