LSAT 145 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: A person’s personality is linked to that person’s genes…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Personalities don’t change.

REASONING: Personalities are affected to genes. And genes generally don’t change with time.

ANALYSIS: There are two problems with this argument:

1. It assumes that genes are the only factor that affects personality.
2. It assumes that something can’t change just because it was initially created a certain way.

An important structural factor is that the author says genes generally don’t change. All of the wrong answers lack this factor.

___________

1. CORRECT. This matches exactly. The historical reality is a starting condition. Problems:
    
   1. Historical reality is not the only factor that affects perception of the war. (e.g. later writings and poor memory can affect perception)
   2. Perception of the war can change, even though it started from a certain cause. (For instance, later scholarship could either clarify the true history of the war, or mix it up).
    
   Finally, the author does say that what happened in the war can’t change.
2. This is a good argument! Also, there’s no factor that can’t be changed, unlike in the original.
3. This is a plausible argument. It doesn’t make any obvious errors. And there’s no factor that can’t be changed, unlike in the original.
4. This argument lacks evidence for its conclusion, but it doesn’t repeat the errors of the stimulus. In particular, there’s no factor that remains unchanged.
5. This is a bad argument. It could be a drop in hormones that cause elevated temperature. But this doesn’t parallel the stimulus. Among other things, there’s no factor that remains unchanged.