LSAT 90 – Section 2 – Question 01

LSAT 90 - Section 2 - Question 01

May 2020

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT90 S2 Q01
+LR
+Exp
Main conclusion or main point +MC
A
4%
151
B
0%
142
C
2%
147
D
93%
161
E
0%
153
127
135
144
 +Easier 146.031 +SubsectionMedium

This is a Main Conclusion question.

The argument is pretty straightforward. First we encounter the main conclusion, followed by the major premise, followed by the minor premise.

The main conclusion is that many people who enjoy popular music don't realize that popular music has been used to express religious and political messages. The next sentence begins with “after all,” which is a premise indicator. After all, popular music has repeatedly been adopted by social movements to express their viewpoints. Why? That's answered by the clause following the word “since.” Since (or because) popular music has the potential to contribute to the conversion of nonmembers and to raise morale and express solidarity of the movement's participants.

These claims together support the idea that popular music has been used to express certain political or religious messages. But it doesn’t support very well the idea that “many people who enjoy popular music do not realize” that it has been serving that purpose. Oh well. Our job isn’t to criticize this argument. Rather, it’s just to analyze its structure. We’ve done that and so we should move on to the answers.

Correct Answer Choice (D) says popular music has purposes other than mere entertainment. This is a more general claim than the actual conclusion. The actual conclusion supports this more general claim. If it's true that people who simply enjoy listening to popular music don't realize that popular music has been used to express religious or political messages, then it's true that popular music has purposes other than mere entertainment. Often on Main Conclusion or Main Point questions, we see an answer like this. Given what the other answers say, this is the best of the options. But it’s certainly not the ideal answer choice. An ideal answer choice would have more closely paraphrased the first sentence.

Answer Choice (A) says popular music accounts for the success of social movements. This statement attributes a causal power to popular music that we don't know it has. What we do know from the stimulus is that popular music has the potential to do a lot of things for a social movement, but not all potentials are actualized.

Answer Choice (B) says popular music's entertainment value has been overemphasized. We don't know this is true. We don't know to what degree popular music's entertainment value has been emphasized nor do we know to what degree it should have been emphasized, so we don't know whether it has been overemphasized.

Answer Choice (C) says popular music is the most effective way of converting people to social movements. This is a worse answer than (A). Again, we know popular music is potentially one way to convert people but we don't know if it's even an effective way, not to mention the most effective way.

Answer Choice (E) says popular music has a profound emotional impact on its listeners. Based on the information in the stimulus, we don't know if this is true. Obviously, we know this to be true, but that doesn’t matter.

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LSAT PrepTest 90 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logic Games

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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