LSAT 148 – Section 1 – Question 13

LSAT 148 - Section 1 - Question 13

December 2016

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Ask a tutor

Target time: 1:27

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT148 S1 Q13
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
A
77%
164
B
3%
152
C
6%
158
D
10%
158
E
4%
156
140
150
160
 +Medium 142.771 +SubsectionEasier

If the purpose of laws is to contribute to people’s happiness, we have a basis for criticizing existing laws as well as proposing new laws. Hence, if that is not the purpose, then we have no basis for the evaluation of existing laws, from which we must conclude that existing laws acquire legitimacy simply because they are the laws.

Summarize Argument
The author concludes that existing laws have legitimacy simply because they are the laws. This is based on a subsidiary conclusion that, if the purpose of laws is not to contribute to people’s happiness, then we don’t have a basis for evaluating existing laws. This sub-conclusion is based on the premise that if the purpose of laws is to contribute to people’s happiness, then we have a basis for criticizing laws.

Identify and Describe Flaw
The author confuses a sufficient condition for having a basis for criticizing existing laws with a necessary condition. Although we know that if the purpose of laws is to contribute to happiness, then we have a basis, that doesn’t imply that if the purpose of laws is not to contribute to happiness, that we no longer have a basis to criticize laws. So the author’s jump to the sub-conclusion is flawed.

A
takes a sufficient condition for a state of affairs to be a necessary condition for it
The purpose of laws being happiness is sufficient to have a basis for criticizing laws. But the author thinks this purpose is necessary for having a basis to criticize.
B
infers a causal relationship from the mere presence of a correlation
The evidence doesn’t present a correlation.
C
trades on the use of a term in one sense in a premise and in a different sense in the conclusion
The author doesn’t use any term in two ways. “Legitimacy” means legitimacy throughout the argument. “Laws” mean laws throughout the argument.
D
draws a conclusion about how the world actually is on the basis of claims about how it should be
The evidence does not assert anything about how the world “should” be.
E
infers that because a set of things has a certain property, each member of that set has the property
The argument doesn’t commit a whole-to-part fallacy. There is no whole presented in the premises, and no individual parts of a whole presented in the conclusion.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 148 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply