LSAT 156 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q19

LR Question 19 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: I promised Bernie that I would answer his question …

QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption

CONCLUSION: I fulfilled my promise to answer Bernie’s question.

REASONING: I gave a truthful response to what I thought the question was.

ANALYSIS: There’s an obvious gap here. Bernie asked whether his project was approved. The author misunderstood and thought he asked if they approved it.

So they didn’t actually answer what Bernie asked but they still claim they fulfilled the promise of answering Bernie’s question.

For that to follow, we need something that tells us what it means to answer a question. Specifically, we need it to mean something like: as long as you provide the relevant information, you’ve done your job (even if you misunderstood the exact wording).

Without that, the argument fails, because answering the wrong question wouldn’t count as fulfilling the promise.

___________

1. CORRECT. If answering a question simply means giving the requested information, that means the author fulfilled her promise to Bernie. She said Dorothy hasn’t made a decision yet, so that gives the requested information even if that’s not answering the exact question.
2. This is about responsibility for decisions, which isn’t relevant to whether the promise was fulfilled.
3. We don’t care who should explain decisions. We care what it means to answer a question.
4. This might actually weaken the argument. It says doing your best isn’t the same as fulfilling the promise.
5. Sure, promises should be kept. But that doesn’t help us determine whether the author’s promise to Bernie was actually kept.