LR Question 24 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Politician: Democracy requires that there be no…
QUESTION TYPE: Role in Argument
CONCLUSION: Having the government monitor communications would be a blow to democracy.
REASONING: Democracies needs their citizens to be able to freely share ideas. And therefore citizens need to be able to have private conversations which the government doesn’t watch.
ANALYSIS: This question asks about the first sentence. That’s a general principle the argument uses to support the next sentence, which is used to support the conclusion.
- Democracy requires….➞ general principle, unsupported
- Therefore the right….➞ subsidiary conclusion, supported by principle
- For a government…..thus….➞ conclusion, supported by subsidiary conclusion
Note that when an argument gives a general principle, it is unsupported (and on the LSAT, usually doesn’t need any). If I say “puppies are cute, so we should get one”, my statement that puppies are cute has no external support. I’m simply assuming you accept it as true.
___________
- This is close, but the principle is also used to support the subsidiary conclusion.
- CORRECT. This matches. See the analysis above. The principle supports a subsidiary conclusion which in turn supports the conclusion.
- There’s no support. Support would be some other sentence that explained why democracy requires no restrictions.
- No, the final sentence is the conclusion. The word “thus” indicates this.
- Same as D. The word “thus” in the final sentence indicates that that sentence is the conclusion.
More Resources for Role in Argument Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Role in Argument questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers role in argument questions.
How can we tell when words like thus/therefore are just deceit and trickery? Conjunction words like “for” set up subordinate clauses that typically operate as premises in arguments that follow conventional rules of English, but here “for” precedes the main conclusion and “therefore” a subsidiary claim (which takes the form of a categorical statement). Any help would be great. I’m getting 5-6 wrong every LR section and being able to even get 20% more accuracy on these could help a lot. Thanks for all you do and for this site.
First of all, English words often have many meanings. “For” in arguments is often used to mean “because, is”. But the word has 15+ definitions in the dictionary and can mean other things. Here, it is used as part of an idiomatic expression, and it means something closer to “if”. i.e.
“If you go to the coast, you’d be making a mistake.”
“For you to go to the coast would be a mistake”
For….would go together as a pair of words in this idiom. In this case, for doesn’t mean “because”. Honestly, this is an uncommon definition and I couldn’t even find it in a dictionary, but it does exist. Idioms are one of the hardest part of a language.
Fortunately, even if you don’t properly get the definition of a word, you can figure out which sentence is the conclusion and which is a supporting premise by removing the therefore/for, combining them, and then using common sense to figure out which one supports which.
In this case, we have two statements. Let’s scratch out the therefore/for:
“The right to have private conversations, unmonitored by the government, is essential to democracy.”
“A government to monitor conversations on the Internet would thus be a setback for democracy.”
Let’s see what makes more sense:
“The right to have private conversations, unmonitored by the government, is essential to democracy THEREFORE a government to monitor conversations on the Internet would thus be a setback for democracy.”
OR
“A government to monitor conversations on the Internet would thus be a setback for democracy THEREFORE the right to have private conversations, unmonitored by the government, is essential to democracy.”
Reading this to yourself, the first statement sound much more correct. If the right to private conversations is essential to democracy, then this statement can be used in an argument to support not having the government monitor Internet conversations. The opposite (second statement) does not have this effect.