PT 69, Sec. 1, #14

DumbHollywoodActor

We debated this question for a long time in Group BR last night. While almost everyone got the correct answer, we were strongly divided about the actual flaw in the stimulus. Some people held the explanation essentially that the argument failed to consider that it was a dichotomy or binary choice. Now, I know JY, Manhattan Forums, and Graeme Blake all state this as the purported flaw of the stimulus, but I find this explanation to be wanting.

Others, including myself, felt that the stimulus was guilty of circular reasoning. To be honest, to explain that an argument fails to consider the possibility of a binary choice seem like a huge assumption. It also seems downright arbitrary. If that were true, wouldn’t that call into question every time we find that an argument is guilty of a false dichotomy? Whereas Circular Reasoning makes sense to me because the conclusion is essentially a restatement of the premises. This explanation requires far less assumptions (especially the difficult-to-swallow “The two options given COULD be the ONLY options”) than those previously mentioned.

I think this is worthy of discussion and I invite mentors, Sages, tutors, and everyone else who wants to to weigh in on it.

@PMLSAT83
@nicole.hopkins
@poohbear
@c.janson35
@Pacifico

[Mod edit]
For reference:
http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-69-section-1-question-14/

Pacifico

This is not an example of circular reasoning. While the stimulus makes it a bit difficult to see the binary choice flaw in play, it is much more easily recognized in answer choice A.

To further illustrate this, imagine that Ben Carson and Martin O'Malley win their respective parties nominations and nobody else is running in the general. Just because you independently see no reason for each of them to win does not mean that you can conclude that there is no reason to believe neither of them will win, since in fact it must be one or the other.

Does this help illustrate it a little better? If not let me know and I'll try and come up with something else.

Circular reasoning is a very specific thing that I think looks like A --> B --> A. So an example would be "if you eat cookies then you are fat; you are fat, therefore you eat cookies".

lalafiggy

@DumbHollywoodActor said:
This explanation requires far less assumptions (especially the difficult-to-swallow “The two options give COULD be the ONLY options”) than those previously mentioned.

This is not an assumption, it's just a possibility! And the fact that it is a possibility is what makes the flaw. To recognize that something could be the case is not an assumption that it is the case.

DumbHollywoodActor

@Pacifico said:
imagine that Ben Carson and Martin O'Malley win their respective parties nominations and nobody else is running in the general.

But aren’t you making a false dichotomy flaw with this example? What if we lived in a country with a non-binary election? Then, it doesn’t work.

DumbHollywoodActor

@lalafiggy said:
This is not an assumption, it's just a possibility!

But the argument for the explanation of the flaw in the stimulus is assuming that that possibility is the only possibility, right?

DumbHollywoodActor

@Pacifico said:
if you eat cookies then you are fat; you are fat, therefore you eat cookies".

If I’m not mistaken, that example is not circuar reasoning. That’s Sufficiency/Necessity confusion.

Pacifico

No it's taking the premises and conclusion and then using the conclusion as a premise to conclude the premises. You have to take it as a whole.

Pacifico

And I was just using that example to show more clearly where a flaw would be.

DumbHollywoodActor

@Pacifico said:
No it's taking the premises and conclusion and then using the conclusion as a premise to conclude the premises. You have to take it as a whole.

Ok. that’s interesting. Can you show me another example?

DumbHollywoodActor

I hate to use Wikipedia as my source but those examples look rather similar to the stimulus:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

Pacifico

In a non conditional form you could argue that I'm right because I'm right... Another way of thinking about is that you are assuming what you are seeking to establish as true... I think in conditional forms it just necessarily becomes a sufficiency/necessity flip due to the nature of the argument structure itself.

Thankyou7

This diagram of the flaw may be helpful:
I ---> not PC
I ----> not PL
Conc I ----> not PC or PL

DumbHollywoodActor

@Thankyou7 said:
This diagram of the flaw may be helpful:
I ---> not PC
I ----> not PL
Conc I ----> not PC or PL

I’m not sure how that diagram explains that the flaw isn’t circular reasoning, nor am I certain how it illustrates the “fails to consider that this is a binary system” “flaw”.

Thankyou7

It was supposed to help show that it is in fact circular reasoning because it's literally restating the premises except it's including both into the conclusion rather than individually.

DumbHollywoodActor

@Pacifico said:
I think in conditional forms it just necessarily becomes a sufficiency/necessity flip due to the nature of the argument structure itself.

I see your point. But I still don’t see how that proves that the stimulus in #14 isn’t a circular argument. Clearly, there’s something fundamental that I’m not seeing because it seems as bright as day to me that that is the case.

DumbHollywoodActor

@Thankyou7 said:
t was supposed to help show that it is in fact circular reasoning because it's literally restating the premises except it's including both into the conclusion rather than individually.

Well, Thank you 7 times, @Thankyou7 !

truekauai

This is a very interesting question.

I think the key to this problem is an assumption. The author of the stimulus is making the assumption that there are other ways for a forest fire to start other than campers or lightning. Do we have any reason to believe that there are other possibilities? No. There is no premise to support this, that is why it is an assumption by the author. That is also why this argument is flawed. It is not a deductive argument because it hinges on an assumption.

I also realize that I have been using examples with only two options. However, this flaw could appear in an argument with a lot of possibilities. Here is an example:

I have no proof that film A (nominated) will win the best picture award
I have no proof that film B (nominated) will win the best picture award
I have no proof that film C (nominated) will win the best picture award
I have no proof that film D (nominated) will win the best picture award
I have no proof that film E (nominated) will win the best picture award

Thus, I have no proof that film A or film B or film C or film D or film E will win the best picture award.

This argument requires a huge assumption: that there are other films that were nominated. If there are no other films nominated, we do have proof that one of these five films will win. They were the only ones nominated.

DumbHollywoodActor

@truekauai Okay, so this is getting somewhere. Nice of you to use a film award example, since I AM a dumb Hollywood actor.

So the flaw of the argument that I see is that it doesn’t specify one way or another how many films were nominated. I think I can wrap my head around that.

It almost feels like a necessary assumption. Maybe that’s why I was having trouble seeing it because I might be assuming that necessary assumptions aren’t flaws per se.

Not bad, Mini-Me!

Pacifico

The biggest thing in play here is that you could have narrowed the cause down to lightning or campers even if you have no proof that it was either one specifically. This is just not what a circular argument is. I'm not sure how you would make this argument circular because you have two premises you are combining and both are based on not having proved something. It would look something like "the investigators have not proven that the cause was lightning or campers so the cause was neither lightning nor campers." But even this isn't exactly circular since you are drifting from not having proven something to something actually being the case.

The classic circular reasoning "The Bible is the word of God because God says so in the Bible" is another illustration of how circular reasoning folds directly back on itself. I'm not 100% sure how it works in conditional logic scenarios but intuitively it feels like it should be as I mentioned in my previous comment.

Thankyou7

Because he is right and because he is correct. He is right or correct.

Thankyou7

Isn't it a "begging the question" flaw because it's begging the question "do other options exist?"

Thankyou7

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question check this out guys, I think it's accurate.

Pacifico

http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallacies/61-begging-the-question

Begging the question specifically does not mean raising the question as you used it there.

blah170blah

Isn't the flaw that "absence of evidence" does not mean proof that it didn't happen (stimulus) or will happen (answer choice A)?

Pacifico

Here is a much better discussion of how we got here etymologically...

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290

Pacifico

So really, at a minimum, it should look like A ---> A without the need for anything else.

c.janson35

I think it would be circular in this case if the argument was this:

The investigators have not proved that lightning caused the fire. Nor have they proved that campers started the fire. So, the investigators have not proved that the Lightning caused the fire and they have not proved that campers caused the fire.

But, there's a difference in saying "So, the investigators have not proved that campers or lightning have started the fire" because we don't know if they have in fact not proven this. It is possible that they have 100% proved that either campers or lightning started the fire, but without any evidence leaning to a particular cause; nonetheless, by eliminating all other causes, it's possible that they have proved campers or lightning started the fire.

I think the key might be to think of "campers or lightning" as a single entity here. It's possible that the entity has been proven by eliminating other possibilities, but the conclusion on the particular aspects of the entity are still not definitive.

Pacifico

@c.janson35 FTW! Hire this man for all your LSAT needs!

DumbHollywoodActor

@c.janson35 said:
I think the key might be to think of "campers or lightning" as a single entity here. It's possible that the entity has been proven by eliminating other possibilities, but the conclusion on the particular aspects of the entity are still not definitive.

Not to put words into your mouth, but are you saying that this is a Part to Whole Flaw?

Pacifico

I think you might be able to make the case for that, though it perhaps wouldn't be in the traditional sense of what we talk about when we talk about part to whole flaws...

poohbear

After Pacfico's input at the end of the call, I was pretty convinced that it wasn't circular reasoning. Perhaps I didn't have a clear grasp on circular reasoning in the first place. But I think the explanations presented above definitely helps clarify the issue at hand.

Okay, I'm going to take a stab at this. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong:

I think this question is especially tricky and difficult for me to wrap my head around it because there are so many different characters/ parts involved-- I'm looking at the investigators and what they're doing (not proving things) and then I'm also looking at what the investigators are looking into (the forest fires and it's causes). But the problem is I'm so distracted by all of this when in fact, I really should be taking a step back and thinking about what flaw the AUTHOR is committing here.

The problem here is that the author is ignoring a possible world and then jumping to a conclusion in which that world doesn't even exist. The binary cut just so happens to be the possible world here.

For example: I see that my sister hasn't proven that Arielle took the cookie from the cookie jar. And I see that my sister hasn't proven that Adrienne took the cookie from the cookie jar. Based on this, I'm going to say that my sister hasn't been able to prove that the cookie was taken by either one of the kids.

^Can I really conclude this? My argument would be flawed since I'm assuming that just because my sister hasn't been able prove which kid did it, that she isn't able to say the cookie was taken by either one of them. My sister might not know if Arielle did it or Adrienne did it. But can we say that she doesn't know if the cookie was taken by either kid? Not necessarily. I'm completely ignoring the world/possibility that my sister knew it could've only been either Adrienne or Arielle taking the cookie and no one else.

The flaw here is based on MY incorrect assumption. Remember to take a step back and think about what the author's argument is and the flaw involved. Don't get too wrapped up in everything else. See past the craziness!

@DumbHollywoodActor It clarified a lot for me when put it in a situation that I could easily relate to. The cookie situation involving my nieces and my sister is definitely something that could happen everyday at home. Try reworking the question into something that might make it easier for you to understand-- maybe the cookie situation with your wife and kids? Good luck!

DumbHollywoodActor

@Pacifico @poohbear @Thankyou7 @lalafiggy @blah170blah @truekauai
I love that this problem has engendered all of this discussion.

@c.janson35 said:
The investigators have not proved that lightning caused the fire. Nor have they proved that campers started the fire. So, the investigators have not proved that the Lightning caused the fire and they have not proved that campers caused the fire.

So, you moved around a lot of words, but essentially, the meaning of your example is identical to the stimulus with one exception: “and" instead of “or”. I thought the or essentially means “and” on the LSAT unless it has the “but not both”. From Pacifico’s link I see that the difference between a “begging the question” and the stimulus is that the stimulus’s premises aren’t assuming the conclusion is true. They’re restating the conclusion, but separating out it’s parts. Evidently, that is not circular reasoning.

I think I see what everyone means now, though. Let me see if I can explain it. I tried to treat this as a necessary assumption question and something clicked for me. A correct answer could be “The forest fire was started by something other than campers or lightning.” Once I understood that that would clearly be a correct answer, it all clicked. It also showed that my understanding of flaws has been limited. I think I blocked in my mind that necessary assumptions are flaws. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but it’s true. Essentially, unless it’s a purely deductive argument (All Jedis use the Force, Luke is a Jedi, Therefore, Luke uses the Force), almost every argument is riddled with splinter-like flaws. It seems so obvious now that I’m stating it, but it was clearly something I was blocking before.

Thanks, everyone!