LR Question 16 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Activist: Any member of the city council ought either…
QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption
CONCLUSION: At least one member should vote against the proposal.
REASONING: Members should either vote against or abstain. If they all abstain, voters will decide the issue.
ANALYSIS: The argument doesn’t say why it’s a bad idea to let voters decide the issue.
It’s clear that council members shouldn’t vote for the proposal. It’s not clear why they shouldn’t let it get decided by voters.
To prove the argument correct, we must say that it’s a bad idea to let the issue go to the voters.
___________
- This is very tempting. But the argument didn’t say the proposal shouldn’t pass. The argument just said that council members shouldn’t be the ones to vote for it.
- CORRECT. If this is true, then at least one council member should vote against the proposal so that it doesn’t reach voters.
- This still doesn’t tell us whether council members should abstain or vote against the proposal.
- This tells us that voting against the proposal will prevent it from going to voters. It doesn’t tell us whether we should care if the proposal goes to voters.
- The stimulus didn’t say whether all members ought to vote against the proposal – this is irrelevant. The conclusion is just that ONE member should vote against the proposal. The rest are presumably free to abstain.
More Resources for Sufficient Assumption Questions
- Conditional Reasoning Article: Learn about conditional statements.
- LR Diagrams Guide: Learn how to draw LR diagrams.
- Intro to Conditional Reasoning: Learn conditional reasoning basics.
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Sufficient Assumption questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers sufficient assumption questions.
Wonderful explanation about the SHOULD. Noted and will keep an eye out for that.
Hi I’m still not convinced about why A is wrong. Isn’t it totally implied in the conclusion by its nature that the activist doesn’t think it should pass? Why else would he say that if every member abstains that one of them should vote it down?! Doesn’t that show that he thinks it should be voted down?
Aside from that isn’t it implied that if the city voters vote it may get passed, which would be undesirable?
Thanks!
>Aside from that isn’t it implied that if the city voters vote it may get passed, which would be undesirable?
Yes, this is implied. The voters may vote it in. So that’s why the activist wants councillor’s to oppose it. We already knew this was a risk, so adding A does nothing for the argument.
But the real issue is that the conclusion says “should”. On the LSAT there’s a strict separation between what is true and what should be true. A merely talks about what is true. B actually connects the evidence to the conclusion by telling us that we SHOULD NOT want the issue to be decided by voters. This lets us conclude that at least one councillors SHOULD vote against the proposal.
Hi – thanks a lot for this. I picked B, but really struggled to choose between B and D. D seems to bridge a second gap in the argument, i.e. that if NOT ALL the voters abstain then the matter will NOT be decided by the city voters. Both B and D in this case are required assumptions, B just more so.
So if we had
Premise 1) everyone should A or N
Premise 2) if everyone A –> city votes
Conc: At least 1 A
We need to be able to show that: if at least 1 A –> NOT city votes, as well as the fact that we dont want “city votes”.
Hope that makes sense. I must be missing something – but no idea what!
>Both B and D in this case are required assumptions, B just more so.
This is the problem. You’re NOT looking for a necessary assumption question. This is a sufficient assumption question. They’re very, very different. Some methods mix them together because both use the word “assumption”, but it’s wrong.
So you’re looking to prove the conclusion correct. The author is saying we someone should vote against the proposal, so that it doesn’t go to voters.
But why? Why should we care whether it goes to voters? Only B addresses this, by telling us that we shouldn’t want the proposal to voters.
D doesn’t tell us what we “should” do. Since the conclusion is about “should”, a moral idea, then only an answer with “should” can help prove the conclusion.
Thanks for the explanation, but i still don’t understand how the conclusion follows logically if we don’t ALSO assume (d)? So according to the way I undertand it, both (b) and (d) are wrong, mainly because the conclusion does not follow logically if either one individually is assumed, leaving us without a correct answer.
Think of it this way:
* You’re given a choice between two doors
* Door 1 has certain, painful death
* Door 2 you know nothing about, except that it could not be worse than A.
Door 2 is hands down a superior choice. That’s why we don’t need answer D. We know for sure that abstaining leads to a bad outcome. Whereas we don’t know what happens if one council member votes. Since there’s a chance the issue won’t go to voters, they should do that.
I agree it would be sensible to find out what happens if a council member votes for it, but it’s not technically a flaw in the question.
they way i decided between b and d was just looking for the more extreme answer between the two lol, i got lucky i guess
Hah, yes, that does happen. That being said, I would only suggest that strategy if you’re running out of time on a question or section and you need to guess. LSAC seems to be very aware that students eliminate answers on the basis of them being too “extreme”, and so they’ll often make the more extreme answer the correct one.
Answer choices that make very broad or all-encompassing claims are suspect, but make sure that you have strong reasons supported by the stimulus to rule them out. Just because an answer choice makes broad claims, doesn’t mean it’s automatically the wrong answer.
Aight i guess I hear that, but you kind of did switch from your first comment where you said the reason D is wrong is because it’s only a necessary assumotion as appose to a sufficient one.. just saying.
Ah, to be clear, D isn’t necessary. In my first comment, I was telling the user NOT to look for a necessary assumption answer. But I didn’t mean to say D is necessary.
It’s only necessary that if something votes against, the issue won’t go to voters.
But D says “not abstain”. You could negate D like this:
* Vote for: goes to voters
* Vote against: does not go to voters
In this case, D is not true. But the argument still works.
Definitely made me think though haha
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.