LSAT 156 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q15

LR Question 15 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: People would not follow a leader if they felt that there was nothing …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Incompetent or evil leaders still bring some good to their supporters.

REASONING: People wouldn’t support them if they didn’t get anything out of it.

ANALYSIS: I can think of many examples where people blindly follow something without any rationality. This is treating people’s behavior as perfectly rational. It assumes that if people follow someone, it must be because they’re actually getting something good out of it.

But that doesn’t have to be true. People might follow leaders for bad reasons (misinformation, pressure, habit, etc).

So the argument is taking: “People would only do this if X”,

and turning it into: “Since they do it, X must be true” – without considering that the premise might not hold in reality.

___________

1. CORRECT. Same pattern: people only promote theories they think are true -> therefore, any promoted theory must have some truth. It assumes people’s behavior guarantees the truth of what they support.
2. This is generally an okay argument, except there might be a flaw in conflating circumstances and people.
3. This is an incorrect reversal of a conditional statement.
4. This is conflating actual truth with people’s ability to discern the truth, which isn’t the same flaw as the stimulus.
5. This isn’t a flawed argument.