LSAT 118 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Reviewer: Many historians claim, in their own treatment …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: We shouldn’t accept historians’ claims that they’re objective.

REASONING: It’s easy to find examples of false historical explanations that reflect the prejudices of their authors.

ANALYSIS: The reviewer never actually establishes that the biased, false historical works were written by the same historians making these claims of objectivity.

As written, the reasoning could be:

Historians A and B claim to be objective. Historians D and C write biased, false history. So Historians A and B’s claims of objectivity are false.

That obviously doesn’t follow. The reviewer is improperly generalizing from some biased historical works to the falsity of any historians’ claims of objectivity.

___________

1. There’s no mention that the natural sciences’ model of objectivity should apply. The argument just states that historians themselves make that comparison.
2. The evidence doesn’t undermine the conclusion. It’s simply insufficient to support it. The reviewer is trying to use the evidence in support of the conclusion.
3. This introduces a possibility the reviewer ignores, but it is not necessary to explain the flaw. Even if historians use methods to reduce bias, the main problem remains that the reviewer never links the biased works to the historians making the claims of objectivity.
4. CORRECT. The argument takes for granted that at least some of the false, prejudiced historical works were written by historians who claim to be objective. Without that assumption, the evidence is irrelevant. The jump requires assuming the two groups overlap.
5. The reviewer specifically discusses false historical explanations embodying prejudices. The argument doesn’t depend on the claim that all ideologically influenced histories are false.