LSAT 28, Logical Reasoning I, Q12, LSATHacks

LR Question 12 Explanation, by LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: People who say that Dooney County is flat are…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Dooney county is not flat.

REASONING: On flat land, farmers won’t build terraces with the intention of preventing soil erosion. Yet Dooney county farms have many terraces.

ANALYSIS: Are there other reasons that people build terraces, apart from preventing soil erosion? Maybe terraces look nice.

The author only proved that people won’t build terraces in order to prevent soil erosion. They might build terraces for other reasons.

___________

1. This doesn’t matter, since one of the premises says that people don’t build terraces to prevent erosion (no matter the cause).
2. CORRECT. The argument only proved that no flatlanders build terraces in order to prevent erosion. If none of the terraces were built to prevent erosion, then the argument has a problem.
3. We don’t care whether terraces work. We only care why they were built.
4. We don’t care whether soil erosion is a problem. Whether or not terraces would work to prevent erosion, we know that no flatlanders do build them in order to prevent erosion.
5. Non-farm terraces don’t matter. The argument’s evidence only relates to terraces on farmland.

Hi, I'm Graeme Blake

Founder of LSAThacks; I scored a 177 on the LSAT.

I created the LSAT Mastery Seminars, which are part of the Ultimate LSAT Prep Bundle

If you like the explanations you're reading I'm 100% confident you'll enjoy the courses. Satisfaction guaranteed.

---------
Updates:

For updates, sign up for my email list. I update whenever I have new posts.