LSAT 128 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q22

LR Question 22 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Critic: Historians purport to discover the patterns inherent …

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Histories reveal more about the presuppositions of historians than about what actually happened in historical events.

REASONING: Historians don’t just simply discover historical patterns. They impose them by choosing what to include and exclude from their historical narratives.

ANALYSIS: This critic is arguing that history tells us more about the historians themselves than about the events that actually occurred. Why? Because historians impose historical patterns by deciding what is or is not included.

There’s a logical gap here. There’s a leap from historians choosing what to include to the conclusion that history reveals more about historians than about actual events.

To put it simply: Even if historians make choices about what to include or exclude, that doesn’t automatically mean these choices are entirely shaped by their own presuppositions.

The missing assumption must connect these two ideas – that the way a historian constructs a pattern is shaped by their presuppositions. Otherwise, you could construct a pattern without this necessarily telling you anything about their presuppositions, which would destroy the argument.

___________

1. The argument doesn’t depend on whether historians share presuppositions. Even if they had entirely different ones, it would still hold.
   Negation: Historians do not have many presuppositions in common with each other.
2. The argument doesn’t require that we can never tell if a historical pattern is actually objectively real and historical. It just says that usually it reveals more about historians than historical events.
   Negation: We can determine with certainty whether a pattern is actually present in history and not just imposed by historians.
3. The critic never makes a comparison across different eras or says that historians believe in universal patterns across eras.
   Negation: Historians do not presuppose that certain patterns accurately describe different eras.
4. It doesn’t actually matter whether or not historians are aware of their biases. They’re imposing patterns regardless. So whether or not they intend to, it’s still happening.
   Negation: Most historians can become aware of the presuppositions that they bring to their narratives.
5. CORRECT. This negation destroys the argument. If a historian’s presuppositions do not influence the patterns they impose, then the critic’s claim that history reveals more about the historian than actual events would collapse.
   Negation: Which pattern a historian imposes upon events is not affected by that historian’s presuppositions.