Self-study
Political scientist: Support The concept of freedom is hopelessly vague. ███ ██████████ ██ ███████ ████ ██████ ███████ ████ ████ ████ ███████████ ███████ ██ █████ ██ █████ ████ ████ ████ ███████████ ████ ███████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ██ ████████ █████████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ██████████████ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ████████████ ██████ ██ █████████ ██ ███████
The Flaw: Value Judgment And Conceptual Jumps In General
If you’re well practiced at parsing arguments, you should raise your eyebrows when the conclusion suddenly introduces tons of new concepts. Conclusions need to be supported by the claims around them, so we need to find counterparts for all the following concepts in the premises:
- Political Organization
- Futile
- Should be disavowed
#1 and #3 are the big baddies.
#3 exhibits a common pattern of flawed reasoning on the LSAT – the value judgment. It introduces a normative claim (about what we should do) when the premises feature only descriptive claims (about how things are).
#1 is also a problematic jump – where does the concept of political organization ever appear in the premises?
#2 makes for a good contrast to the other two. The concept of futility actually does appear in the stimulus – within the word “hopelessly”.
We can expect the correct answer to point out these new, unsupported concepts in the argument’s conclusion.
4.
The reasoning in the argument ██ ████████████ ███████ ███ ████████
a
generalizes from an ████████████████ ██████ ██ █████ █████████ ████
The author’s conclusion isn’t about every political idea, but about the singular concept of political organization.
Perhaps you saw an overgeneralization when the author moved from “freedom is vague” to “justice, fairness, and equality are equally indeterminate.” The cleanest way to dismiss this reading is that those three additional ideas still aren’t every political idea.
It’s also important to note that the statement about justice, etc. is a mere premise – it’s an independent claim, not designed to be supported by the author’s argument about freedom.
b
makes the unsupported █████ ████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████ ██ ██████████ █████
Making an unsupported claim isn’t a bad thing. All premises are unsupported claims.* Making an unsupported inference is a bad thing, though. That’s what (D) points out.
Learn to recognize this as a meme in wrong answers to Flaw questions – they’ll point out a premise and complain that it’s not supported.
*Well, almost all. Intermediate conclusions technically count as premises since they’re used to support other claims, but usually when people say “premise” they mean the unsupported kind.
c
ignores the fact ████ ████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ █████████████
LSAT arguments are never flawed because they “ignore a fact” that isn’t directly established inside the stimulus. They’re often flawed because they ignore a possibility, but that’s different.
Even assuming some people do view freedom as indispensable, though, that’s neither here nor there with respect to the author’s reasoning about vague definitions.
d
fails to show ███ ████████ ████ ███████ ███ █████████ ██ ████████ ████ ██ ███████ ███ ███ █████████ ██ █████████ ████████████
In flaw questions where the argument makes a big conceptual leap from the premises to the conclusion, the correct answer often looks like (D) does:
The argument fails to connect [the premise stuff] to [the conclusion stuff].
As mentioned in the analysis, the core unsupported elements in this argument’s conclusion are the value judgement (reflected here by rejection) and the novel concept of political organization.
e
is mounted by ███████ ███ ███ █ ██████ ████████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ █████████ ████████████
There’s no reason to believe political scientists have a vested interest in rejecting political organization (like maaaaybe if the speaker were an anarchist…).
More importantly, this answer choice itself commits a common flaw – it makes an ad hominem attack against the author instead of engaging with the substance of their argument. You should aspire to recognize this pattern immediately, which in this case means confidently eliminating (E).