LR Question 9 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: CEO: We have been falsely criticized for not being an…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: We are an environmentally responsible company.
REASONING: We pollute less than we used to, and there are no methods we could use that produce zero pollution. Environmentally responsible organizations pollute the least they can.
ANALYSIS: I'll illustrate this with numbers. Suppose 100 is the most pollution you can produce, and 0 is the least. I'll make an example that fits the CEO's facts, yet shows that his company is a horrible polluter.
The CEO says that he pollutes less than he used to, and there are no methods that let him pollute at zero. So maybe the CEO's company used to pollute at 95, and now they pollute at 93. Whoop-de-do.
An environmentally responsible organization will pollute the least that it can. If there is a method that would let the CEO's company pollute at 20, then they're not being responsible, even though they're better than they used to be.
___________
- The CEO didn't say this. He said that currently there are no zero pollution methods. So maybe the company is doing all that it can at present, even if better methods will be available later.
- Huh? This is a completely different error. It's like saying “ice cream makes you fat, so donuts don't”. The CEO didn't make this error.
- This is a different error. It's like saying “No, I wasn't rude in the restaurant. Therefore, I am never rude”. The CEO is only talking about a specific criticism: whether or not the company is environmentally responsible.
- The final sentence didn't say that the company attempted to reduce pollution. The CEO says that the company did reduce pollution.
- CORRECT. See my analysis above. It's true that the company can't produce zero pollution, but maybe they can still try harder to produce less pollution than they currently do. If so, they're not being responsible.
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Hi, although I understand why (E) is correct, I just wanted to clarify why (C) was wrong? For instance, I thought that the CEO’s claim that “environmentally responsible corporations are corporations that do all they can to pollute less” might constitute an unwarranted term shift, since even a corporation that legitimately does all it can to pollute less might still engage in other actions (i.e., using CFCs, etc.) that render it environmentally irresponsible. Thus, just because the specific criticism (i.e., that the company does not do all it can to reduce pollution) may or may not be true, the CEO, according to how I interpreted (C), generalizes too hastily from that single criticism to state that any criticisms as a class about the corporation not being environmentally responsible must be false. Thus, I just wanted to confirm why (C) would be wrong. Thank you so much!
For the purposes of this question, the CEO’s description of “environmentally responsible corporations” is pretty accurate. In my understanding, use of CFCs and other harmful practices would still be classified as pollution and covered by the CEO’s given standard of “doing all they can to pollute less”.
A specific example in this scenario of the hasty generalization described in C would be something like “our company’s critics say that our pollution output has increased by 50% this quarter, but it has in fact not increased or decreased at all. Therefore, our company is environmentally responsible”. Here, the CEO has correctly found that one criticism is inapplicable (the idea that their pollution output increased), but hastily generalizes that to mean that all environmental criticism is invalid.