QUESTION TEXT: To discover what percentage of teenagers…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle
CONCLUSION: The survey is ambiguous.
REASONING: The survey question was ambiguous.
ANALYSIS: This is sort of like a must be true question. We want a statement supported by the information in the argument.
You might have been unsure why the question was ambiguous. It’s because “influence objects with your thoughts” doesn’t necessarily mean telekinesis. If I think about picking up a coffee cup, then I can influence the movements of the coffee cup by actually picking it up.
___________
- The survey didn’t use an uncontroversial statement. It used a statement that could be interpreted as being uncontroversial.
- This is too broad. We know that one statement had multiple interpretations. We can’t conclude that all statements have multiple interpretations.
- We have no support for this. We only know about one survey which had a badly phrased question. We have no idea how people respond to well phrased questions.
- CORRECT. This has the most support. We know of one survey with a poorly phrased, ambiguous question. That survey lead to ambiguous responses. This is a weak answer, but it’s the best one.
- Nonsense. We know of one statement about psychic phenomena that can be naturalistic. But some statements about psychic phenomena couldn’t be naturalistic. For example: “Some people have magic, psychic powers that defy the laws of nature”. There’s no naturalistic interpretation for that statement.
Recap: The question begins with “To discover what percentage of teenagers”. It is a Principle question. To practice more Principle questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
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