LSAT 134 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Principle: It is healthy for children to engage in an activity …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

PRINCIPLE: A healthy intellectual activity does not harm social development.

APPLICATION: It’s not healthy for Megan to read as much as she does because it reduces the time she spends interacting with others.

ANALYSIS: The principle gives us a necessary condition for the activity to be healthy. In other words:

• Healthy intellectual activity → NOT harm social development.
• Harms social development → NOT healthy.

The application is concluding that Megan’s reading is not healthy. Why? Because it reduces her time interacting with others. But we have no idea whether that reduced time automatically means worse social development.

A child could spend less time interacting with others but still develop socially in other ways. The principle only says the activity can’t detract from social development. It doesn’t say any reduction in social interaction automatically does that. Nor does it mandate how you develop socially.

So, the flaw in the application is that it assumes reduced interaction = harms social development.

___________

1. But the principle isn’t a mere generalization. It’s a conditional rule without exceptions. There’s no issue or flaw with treating it as such, because that’s what it is.
2. The principle doesn’t allow for weighing benefits against harm. It gives a specific condition for when an activity is healthy. Whether intellectual benefits outweigh social harms isn’t relevant.
3. The principle isn’t just about what’s healthy. If you take the contrapositive, it tells us that harming social development is NOT healthy. So it also makes a claim about what’s not healthy.
4. CORRECT. The argument assumes that less time interacting = worse social development. But that’s not necessarily true. The principle only says an activity is unhealthy if it actually harms social development, not simply if it reduces interaction time. Without explaining that connection, there’s a flawed gap.
5. This would be an issue if the application said: NOT harm social development → Healthy. But that’s not what the application does. It argues that social development is harmed.