PT43.S2.Q20 - social critic: one of the most important ways

FerdaFresh

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-43-section-2-question-20/

I find this to be the most interesting LR question I've come across, because I'm pretty darn sure it requires you to make an inference leap based on common sense. Rule #1 about LSAT logical reasoning -- common sense inferences are thrown out the window unless they're supported by the passage.

Answer choice D is the credited answer. Answer choice D requires you to make an assumption that's not in LSAT world. What's your thoughts?

I chose B.

Sami

Hey @FerdaFresh

I do not see the common sense inference from answer choice D. Maybe you can elaborate on that?

Answer choice D says the social critic assumes that a behavior (socializing) that sometimes leads to a certain phenomena (guilt and self loathing) cannot also reduce the overall occurrence of guilt and self loathing.

I find the answer choice to be exactly the mistake our social critic in the stimulus made. We know from stimulus that socializing leads many people (for ex. 10 people) to feel guilt and self loathing but then from this he concludes that socialization has a net effect of increasing the suffering.
In order for us to conclude this we need to know the overall effect socialization has. Answer choice D is pointing out that our social critic hasn't considered this and takes it for granted that it cannot overall reduce the suffering even if it sometimes for some people increases the suffering.

Answer choice B says our social critic fails to address the possibility that socializing may causally contribute to guilt and self loathing even though these two do not always occur together. For answer choice B to be correct our stimulus would look something like this:

Socializing cannot be the cause of self loathing or guilt in people because some people who are socialized do not feel self loathing or guilt.
This would be the same as saying smoking cannot cause cancer because some people who smoke do not have cancer.

I hope this helped.

akistotle

Hi @FerdaFresh,

While @Sami already explained perfectly, I found that you have commented in the comment section of PT43.2.20, so I'd like to respond to that comment.
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-43-section-2-question-20/#comment-72130

You wrote "I think D is weaker because it requires you assume that socializing children reduces hardship," and I believe this is the "common sense inference" you are talking about. But I don't think (D) requires you to assume that.

(D) simply points out that the argument overlooks the possibility that moral socialization can bring an overall decrease in the total amount of suffering. In order to say that there is a net increase in the total amount of suffering, we need to say moral socialization did not bring any reduce in the amount of suffering.

The argument considered only one effect of moral socialization. The argument didn't consider other factors to say that there is "a net increase." So we don't know if there is "a net increase."

You wrote in the comment section that (B) is saying “fail to address… the possibility that one phenomenon [shaming] may causally contribute to the occurrence of another [feeling hardship], even though the two phenomena do not always occur together [i.e. shaming does not always contribute to hardship… only for MANY people].”

If the argument said something like,"[shaming] and [feeling hardship] are not correlated, so [shaming] isn't causing [feeling hardship]," (B) would be accurately pointing out the flaw.

FerdaFresh

@Sami and @akistotle, thank you so much for your answers. Your responses prompted me to go back and realize exactly where I erred in reasoning -- I wasn't paying enough respect to "cannot also" in AC (D), as it never fully commits to the inference that troubled me, just the possibility of it.

You're both gems!