LSAT 152 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Many fictional works have characters who are supposedly ….

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Many fictional plots show that characters can’t accurately predict future events.

REASONING:

1. If you’re precognitive, you can accurately perceive future events.
2. To accurately perceive a future event, that event has to happen.
3. Some of the future events that characters perceive don’t happen.

ANALYSIS: The first thing to recognize is that this entire stimulus is only about many fictional works, not all.

Let’s diagram the first bit.

The first sentence says: Precognitive -> accurate foresight

The second sentence says: Accurate foresight -> event occurs

If we put that together, we get: Precognitive -> accurate foresight -> event occurs

Then we find out that some of the events don’t occur, so the author concludes that they’re not precognitive.

But we don’t have anything that tells us that all events that you’ve predicted have to occur to be precognitive. If it’s okay to miss the mark on some events, we can’t conclude that the characters aren’t precognitive.

___________

1. CORRECT. This is required for the argument to work. If the negation is true, that you can still be precognitive even if you sometimes are wrong, then the conclusion doesn’t work.
   Negation: A character is precognitive even if some perceptions of future events are inaccurate.
2. The argument doesn’t need to assume anything about whether perfect precognition is possible. It only depends on a definition of what would count as true precognition.
   Negation: It is possible to perceive future events accurately all the time.
3. The stimulus explicitly says some perceived events don’t happen. Ambiguity about unspecified events is irrelevant.
   Negation: The plots always specify whether future events happen.
4. This is totally irrelevant. Whether precognitive visions are central to the plot has nothing to do with whether characters are precognitive.
   Negation: The fact that characters are precognitive is not important to the plot.
5. Too strong. The argument only claims many such works don’t portray truly precognitive characters, not that none ever do. This is the trap I addressed first in the analysis.
   Negation: Some works of fiction portray precognitive characters.