LSAT 152 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q15

LR Question 15 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: It has been said that understanding a person completely leads one to …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Complete self-forgiveness is impossible.

REASONING: If you understand a person completely, you forgive them completely. We can’t understand ourselves completely.

ANALYSIS: It might be helpful to diagram the stimulus.

First sentence: If complete understanding -> complete forgiveness

Second sentence: No self-understanding -> no self-forgiveness

It’s confusing necessary and sufficient conditions. Complete understanding is enough to guarantee forgiveness. But it’s not required for forgiveness or the only way forgiveness can happen.

___________

1. CORRECT. The conclusion treats complete understanding as the only possible path to complete forgiveness, but the premise never says that.
2. This is describing reverse causation, but that’s not what’s happening here.
   Example of flaw: You need self-forgiveness for self-understanding. So if someone has complete self-understanding, they must have self-forgiveness.
3. The argument doesn’t say what has been said is necessarily true. They’re testing the implications of what has been said (“if so …”).
   Example of flaw: People say that understanding a person leads one to forgive that person entirely. So it must be true that complete understanding always leads to complete forgiveness.
4. The stimulus doesn’t make any claim about how desirable it is based on attainability. It just concerns whether it’s attainable at all.
   Example of flaw: Complete self-understanding is unattainable, so there’s no point in striving for it.
5. Similar to D. The stimulus never claimed that we shouldn’t strive for self-forgiveness. It’s just making a claim about whether it’s possible to achieve it.
   Example of flaw: Complete self-forgiveness is impossible to achieve, so we shouldn’t try to forgive ourselves.