LSAT 156 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The computer software industry is rapidly growing …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: If Logichut has no creative employees, then its management must be open to new ideas.

REASONING: To grow rapidly, a company must be innovative, and to be innovative, it must have either creative employees or open management.

ANALYSIS: The industry is rapidly growing, and then we get a rule: if grow rapidly -> innovative -> creative employees OR open management.

Then we hear about Logichut. They conclude that since there’s no creative employees, they must have open management. That would be true if we knew that Logichut was a rapidly growing company. Then the chain would be triggered.

But we don’t know that. Just because it’s a software company, doesn’t mean that the rule applies. The industry is growing as a whole, but that doesn’t mean every single software company – including Logichut – is rapidly growing.

This is a whole-to-part flaw. It assumes that something that’s true for the whole group is true for every part of that group.

___________

1. CORRECT. The argument assumes that because a certain group (rapidly growing companies) has a property, a specific company must also have that property – without showing it belongs to that group.
2. There’s no confusing necessary and sufficient conditions here. The argument gave a sufficient condition for being innovative: growing rapidly. If a company is growing rapidly, then it must be innovative. There is no reversal here.
    
   The issue is that the industry is growing rapidly, but that doesn’t prove an individual company is growing rapidly.
   Example of flaw: To be innovative, you must be alive. You are alive, therefore you are innovative.
3. There’s no appeal to popular belief.
   Example of flaw: Many people think management is open to new ideas, so obviously management in fact is open to new ideas.
4. Like B, there’s no confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. The argument said if you grow rapidly, you must be innovative. To match the answer, the author would have had to have said “This company is innovative, so it is growing rapidly”. The author didn’t say that.
5. The argument doesn’t deny both could be true. It just says one must be.