LSAT 110 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Some people claim that every human discovery…

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: We don’t have to listen to their boring claim.

REASONING: Some people say that discovery or invention is self-expression. But everything we do is self-expression, in a trivial sense.

ANALYSIS: The argument has succeeded in showing that the claim is uninteresting. It then concludes we don’t have to pay attention.

That isn’t always true. If your house is on fire it is “trivial” to figure out that you will be hurt if you don’t try to escape. Not an intellectually interesting claim. But you should definitely listen to that advice, even though it is trivial!

The correct answer strengthens the argument by showing that we don’t have to listen to trivial things.

___________

1. We already know that this particular claim is uninteresting. The argument says so. It doesn’t help much to know that every other trivial claim is uninteresting, too. 
2. It doesn’t matter what most people do. “Most people” can be wrong.
3. CORRECT. This claim is trivial; therefore it too is unworthy of serious consideration. 
4. This would support the idea that the claim could be restated in a more interesting way. But it doesn’t affect the immediate conclusion that we don’t have to bother paying attention to their boring, dull claim. Yawn.
5. It doesn’t really matter if every claim is trivial. We’re trying to support the idea that we don’t have to pay attention to this particular trivial claim.