LSAT 144 – Section 2 – Question 19

LSAT 144 - Section 2 - Question 19

October 2015

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT144 S2 Q19	+LR	Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw	A 5% 159 B 24% 163 C 62% 166 D 6% 157 E 3% 154	143 157 171	+Harder	148.975 +SubsectionMedium

Politician: Union leaders argue that increases in multinational control of manufacturing have shifted labor to nations without strong worker protections, resulting in a corresponding global decrease in workers’ average wages. Given that these leaders have a vested interest in seeing wages remain high, they would naturally want to convince legislators to oppose multinational control. Thus, legislators should reject this argument.

Summarize Argument: Counter-Position

The author concludes that legislators should reject the union leaders’ argument. This is based on the fact that the union leaders have a vested interest in making the argument they did.

Identify and Describe Flaw

The author attacks the source of an argument rather than addressing the merits of the argument. Whether the union leaders have an interest in making the argument they did has no bearing on whether the argument is strong. The author should have evaluated the substance of the union leaders’ claims, not the union leaders’ interests or potential motivations.

treats the mere fact that certain people are union members as sufficient to cast doubt on all of the viewpoints expressed by those people

The author doesn’t try to cast doubt on “all of the viewpoints” of the union leaders. He simply tries to cast doubt on the specific argument they made, as described in the first sentence.

presumes, without providing justification, that anyone whose political motivations are clearly discernible is an unreliable source of information to legislators

The issue isn’t that we can clearly discern the union leaders’ motivation — the issue is that the author thinks they are motivated to make the argument they made. What matters is that they might be motivated to make the argument, not just that we can identify their motivation.

treats circumstances potentially affecting the union leaders’ argument as sufficient to discredit those leaders’ argument

The author treats the fact the leaders have an interest in seeing wages remain high as sufficient to discredit the argument. This is flawed, beacuse even if their argument might be affected by their interests/motivation, that doesn’t discredit the substance of their argument.

presumes, without providing justification, that the argument it cites is the union leaders’ only argument for their view

The conclusion is just that legislators should reject “this” argument, as in the argument described in the first sentence. The leaders might have other arguments; the conclusion doesn’t concern those other arguments. So the author doesn’t assume those other arguments don’t exist.

presumes, without providing evidence, that leaders of all unions argue against increases in multinational control of manufacturing

The author is responding to a particular argument made by certain union leaders. The author doesn’t assume that this argument is made by the leaders of all unions; just the particular union leaders mentioned in the first sentence.

Here's an analogy to help better see why (B) doesn't work, why it's attractive, and what the difference is between a PSA/SA answer and an NA answer.

Premise: Tom is a cat.
Conclusion: Tom likes milk.

If you see something like the above in a PSA/SA question, you might anticipate an answer like (1) "All cats like milk." That certainly would help make the argument valid. But you also would not be surprised to see an answer like (2) "All mammals like milk." Since that too would also make the argument valid (under the reasonable common sense assumption that all cats are mammals). In other words, both (1) and (2) could be the correct answer choice for PSA/SA questions.

However, just because (2) helps the argument does not mean that the author of the argument assumed it. The author could easily say, "No, I wasn't thinking about mammals at all. I was only talking about Tom, cats, and milk." It would be unreasonable to claim that the author assumed anything about mammals even though assumption (2) helps the argument greatly. Such is the nature of very strongly helpful assumptions.

I suspect this confusion might be what tempted many of you to choose (B).

Analogously, if you restate (B) to say "anyone whose political motivations are clearly discernible is an unreliable source of information to legislators", you'd get a correct PSA answer. (B) shoved back up into the shitty argument in the stimulus would really help the argument out just like how (2) shoved back up in to the Tom/cat/milk argument would help that argument out. But you cannot say that the argument assumed it. That's the difference. (B) is not descriptively accurate.

LSAT 144 – Section 2 – Question 19

LSAT 144 - Section 2 - Question 19

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LSAT PrepTest 144 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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