LSAT 112 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q19

LR Question 19 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: My father likes turnips, but not potatoes, which he…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: It is not true that whoever likes potatoes likes turnips.

REASONING: My father likes turnips but not potatoes.

ANALYSIS: The argument gets this backwards. It makes a conclusion about people who like potatoes. But the father like turnips and dislikes potatoes.

To prove the conclusion we would need evidence of someone who likes potatoes but dislikes turnips.

___________

1. This is just a terrible argument. It concludes something about paperbacks based on a book that isn’t a paperback.
   But the conclusion is that no paperbacks are expensive. The stimulus only said that not all people who ate potatoes like turnips. Two different concepts.
2. CORRECT. This makes the same error: It takes information about something that is not a novel and uses it to make a conclusion about novels. Ugh. And like the stimulus, it concludes “not all.”
3. This is a good argument.
4. This is a good argument. It’s not true that everyone who likes physics also likes pure math: Erika is at least one exception
5. This is a bad argument. The premise is: OC ➞ CF. The conclusion reverses this and gets CF ➞ OC. But it isn’t the same error as the stimulus.