QUESTION TEXT: There are only two plausible views about…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning
CONCLUSION: It must be the second possibility. (The aesthetic value of a painting is its meaning)
REASONING: We don’t understand the first possibility. (A painting only could get value from its formal qualities or its meaning. But we don’t understand how it could get value from its formal qualities)
ANALYSIS: I abstracted the argument a little. The author is basically saying there are two possibilities, and we don’t understand one (“there exists no compelling general account”), so it must be the other.
This is flawed for two reasons:
- Something can be true even if we don’t understand why its true!
- Also, the author didn’t say if there is a compelling general account of how paintings get value from meaning either. This is common on the LSAT: an author seems to make a comparison, but actually doesn’t. We might understand neither possibility!
You should look for this form in the answers: An inadequate dismissal of one possibility, so it must be the other possibility.
___________
- This almost matches. The author seems to dismiss surgery. After all, recovery would take a while. But they tell us nothing about angioplasty….maybe it would kill the patient! In which case, surgery’s long recovery would be preferable.
The problem: the author says “among other methods”, implying there are other treatment options outside these two methods. Whereas in the stimulus the author said the two views given were the only plausible ones. So if one were decisively eliminated, then only the other could even work.
This could have been correct had it said “There are only two viable responses to the patient’s condition:….” - This doesn’t match. It should have said something like “but no analyst has shown how the company could find new business. Therefore, it must be able to win the bid.”
- CORRECT. Every element matches. First, the author narrows things down to two options: they say “history is drive primarily by….” so we must take this as a fact. Next, there is the same false dismissal as in the stimulus: “No historian has shown….”. The problem is that the economic forces theory could be true, even if we can’t prove it yet. To eliminate an option you have to actively disprove it. You can’t just say “we haven’t proven this true so far, so it must be false”
- This is a different kind of error. It has two problems:
1. It only tells us what “some analysts” think. We don’t know if these analysts are correct. By contrast, in the stimulus, the author says “there are only two plausible views”. When an author makes a general statement like that, we’re supposed to take it as true.
2. This makes a conditional error. It has a statement along the lines of: A —> B or C. It negates C and tries to negate B. You can’t do that; multiple necessary conditions have no relationship between each other. Whereas, the original stimulus had no conditional logic error. - This is a bad argument, but it makes a different error. The chief problem is does not say “we can’t prove one option, so the other option must be it”.
The actual error here is thinking that the party will automatically lose if some current supporters sit out the next election. It’s possible that by changing policies the party will attract enough new supporters and still win.
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