LSAT 101 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q25

LR Question 25 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The publisher of a best selling self help book had, in…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Strengthen

CONCLUSION: It wasn’t unethical for the publisher to lie.

REASONING: No reasoning is given to support this idea.

The specifics of the lie were that the promise would clearly be impossible to fulfill. Everyone can’t be exceptionally successful. “Exceptionally successful” means “much more successful than the others”.

ANALYSIS: This isn’t a great argument. We’re not told why it’s okay to lie. The right answer shows that since the lie was so obviously false then it wasn’t wrong to say it.

We want to prove the lie was not unethical. So we’re looking either for “a lie is not unethical if” or “a lie is unethical only if”. In the second case, the answer will be right if we’re missing the necessary condition.

Any answers that say “a lie is unethical if” are useless. They can’t help us prove a lie is “not unethical”.

___________

1. CORRECT. The contrapositive is: If it’s not reasonable for people to believe your lie, then it’s not unethical to lie.
    
   And, it wasn’t reasonable for people to believe that everyone could be exceptionally successful. So lying was okay.
2. We have no idea if anyone gained. And it’s not useful to tell us that something is unethical if. That’s a sufficient condition for being unethical. We’re trying to prove something was not unethical.
3. We don’t know what hardships anyone suffered, so this can’t help.
4. We don’t know if anyone is going to act as if the claim is true. Maybe everyone just laughs at the claim.
5. This helps us show something is unethical. We want to prove the lie was not unethical.

Recap: The question begins with “The publisher of a best selling self help book had, in”. It is a Principle Justify question. Learn how to master LSAT Principle Justify questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.