LSAT 135 – Section 4 – Question 18

LSAT 135 - Section 4 - Question 18

December 2011

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT135 S4 Q18
+LR
Most strongly supported +MSS
Principle +Princ
Rule-Application +RuleApp
Part v. Whole +PvW
A
1%
151
B
88%
165
C
4%
154
D
2%
159
E
5%
159
136
145
154
 +Medium 147.853 +SubsectionMedium

Hospitals, universities, labor unions, and other institutions may well have public purposes and be quite successful at achieving them even though each of their individual staff members does what he or she does only for selfish reasons.

Summary

The individual staff members of hospitals, universities, labor unions, and other institutions do their work only for selfish reasons. However, the institutions themselves can still have public purposes and can achieve these public purposes successfully.

Strongly Supported Conclusions

Whether an institution can successfully achieve its public purpose may not depend on the intentions of that institution’s individual staff members.

An institution can possess a property that its members do not possess.

A
What is true of some social organizations is not necessarily true of all such organizations.

This is unsupported. The stimulus does not compare different kinds of social organizations; it only speaks to those institutions with public purposes.

B
An organization can have a property that not all of its members possess.

This is strongly supported. We are told that even though the staff members of an institution are selfishly motivated, the institution can have and achieve public purposes. Thus, the institution can have a property (pursuing public purposes) that not all of its members possess.

C
People often claim altruistic motives for actions that are in fact selfish.

This is unsupported. The stimulus does not tell us whether the staff members, who are selfish, claim to have altruistic motives. It merely tells us that the institution can have altruistic motives even though its members do not.

D
Many social institutions have social consequences unintended by those who founded them.

This is unsupported. The stimulus tells us nothing about the founders of these institutions or what their original intentions might have been. We only know that the institutions are currently able to have and achieve public purposes.

E
Often an instrument created for one purpose will be found to serve another purpose just as effectively.

This is unsupported. The stimulus does not refer to the creation or intended purpose of any instrument. We only know that an institution can have public purposes despite its selfish staff members.

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LSAT PrepTest 135 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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