LSAT 148 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Whether or not one can rightfully call a person’s…

QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion

CONCLUSION: Whether a person’s faithfulness is is a virtue depends partly on the object that faithfulness is directed towards.

REASONING: Virtues must be praiseworthy. Resentment is faithfulness to a hatred, but no one considers resentment praiseworthy, and therefore it isn’t a virtue.

ANALYSIS: The first sentence says “depends in part on”. This kind of claim is usually a conclusion: it is mentioning a cause, and not claiming it as a total cause. Premises will typically be more absolute, like “virtues are by definition praiseworthy”.

Also note that is says “rightfully”, which is a moral claim. Those tend to show up only in conclusions. (I mean moral in the sense of “this is right” or “this is wrong” as opposed to factual claims like “this is blue” or “people consider this praiseworthy”)

You can also see that the second sentence supports the first. The virtue of faithfulness depends on the object because some objects are not praiseworthy.

___________

1. CORRECT. Yes. This is the first sentence, which is supported by the second. See the analysis above for more detail.
2. This was a premise, supporting the claim the faithfulness wouldn’t be virtuous in all cases.
3. The argument actually didn’t say this. It said “no one considers resentment virtuous”. But, that’s different from saying we can’t call behavior motivated by hatred to be virtuous.
    
   For example, someone might do a good deed because they wanted to upstage a rival. Some might still call it virtuous, especially if they didn’t know why the good deed was done.
4. The argument didn’t say this.
5. The argument didn’t say this. It merely said people don’t consider resentment virtuous.

Recap: The question begins with “Whether or not one can rightfully call”. It is a Identify the Conclusion question. To practice more Identify the Conclusion questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.