LSAT 105 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q19

LR Question 19 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: A successful chess-playing computer would prove …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: A successful chess-playing computer would change our idea of human intelligence.

REASONING: It would prove either:

1. Machines can think, or
2. Chess doesn’t involve thinking

ANALYSIS: Let’s interrogate the argument. They’re saying either machines can think or chess doesn’t involve thinking.

Why are those the only two possibilities?

The argument is assuming that if a machine succeeds at chess, it must be doing the same kind of thing humans do when they play chess.

But is that necessarily true?

Imagine a calculator. It can solve arithmetic problems better than you can. Does that mean the calculator “understands” mathematics the way humans do? No. It may simply be using a completely different process to reach the right answers.

Apply that same idea to chess. A computer could potentially:

• brute-force millions of positions
• use statistical pattern recognition,
• use algorithms that no human player could realistically use

If so, the computer’s success wouldn’t necessarily prove that machines can think or chess doesn’t involve thinking.

Instead, it might just suggest that a machine can do well in chess without using the same process as humans do.

___________

1. This says intelligence and thought are closely connected. But that actually fits the author’s setup: the author is already treating chess, thought, and intelligence as connected ideas. It doesn’t expose a missing third option in the argument.
2. The argument is conditional: if a successful chess-playing computer exists, then the author says certain consequences follow. Whether such a computer will ever actually be invented doesn’t challenge the reasoning inside that hypothetical.
3. Other games don’t matter because the argument’s claim is specifically about chess. Even if computers can play checkers, poker, or other games, that doesn’t tell us whether a successful chess computer would prove machines think or prove chess doesn’t involve thinking.
4. CORRECT. This gives the missing third possibility. A chess computer might succeed without playing chess the way humans do, so its success wouldn’t prove that machines think or that chess doesn’t involve thinking. It could just show that a nonhuman process can produce good chess moves.
5. This is about why some humans can’t play chess. But the argument isn’t saying all intelligent humans can play chess; it’s about what a successful chess-playing computer would show about thought and intelligence.