LSAT 143 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: If people refrained from being impolite to one another…

QUESTION TYPE: Role in Argument

CONCLUSION: The government shouldn’t pass laws requiring politeness.

REASONING: Politeness is good, but enforcing politeness laws would cause more problems than impoliteness does now.

ANALYSIS: This question is asking about the role played by the second sentence. That sentence starts with “but”. That’s the argument’s conclusion: society would be worse if there were politeness laws.

“But” often introduces a conclusion. The word shows that the author disagrees with the first sentence, and it presents the second sentence as their opinion.

The third sentence shows a reason why society wouldn’t be better off with politeness laws. This supports the second sentence.

It’s not possible to “explain” a lot of the wrong answers. They simply fail to correspond to the argument. Instead I’ve given examples of what an argument matching those answers would look like.

___________

1. CORRECT. See the analysis above. The word “but” in this case indicates that the second sentence is the conclusion.
2. The argument doesn’t generalize. An example of a generalization: “Americans tend to be polite.”
3. If this answer were true, the sentence in question would be support for an intermediate conclusion. There isn’t even an intermediate conclusion in the argument.
4. There isn’t a generalization in the argument.
   Example of answer: Americans are extremely nice. For instance I once visited America and a family I didn’t know invited me for dinner.
   (The second sentence is the illustration)
5. This didn’t happen at all.
   Example of answer: Americans are incredibly polite. They always say please and thank you and are never rude. I conclude that this is due to the vast openness of the country.
   (The second sentence is the one describing a phenomenon.)