PT23.S2.Q4

PrepTest 23 - Section 2 - Question 4

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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:

  1. Political Organization
  2. Futile
  3. 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.

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4.

The reasoning in the argument ██ ████████████ ███████ ███ ████████

a

generalizes from an ████████████████ ██████ ██ █████ █████████ ████

b

makes the unsupported █████ ████ ███ ███████ ██ ███████ ██ ██████████ █████

c

ignores the fact ████ ████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ █████████████

d

fails to show ███ ████████ ████ ███████ ███ █████████ ██ ████████ ████ ██ ███████ ███ ███ █████████ ██ █████████ ████████████

e

is mounted by ███████ ███ ███ █ ██████ ████████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ █████████ ████████████

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