LSAT 151 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Politician: The legal right to free speech does not…

QUESTION TYPE: Main Point

CONCLUSION: It is justifiable to ban the types of speech I cited.

REASONING: These types of speech, although different, can all lead to serious harm.

ANALYSIS: The word “since” is a reasoning indicator: the words after it are reasoning, and the words before it are conclusions. Further, words like “justifiable” tend to indicate conclusions: this applies to any words that talk about what is “right”, what we “should” do, etc. They’re all moral words.

“For example” also indicates reasoning, which supports the separate conclusion that the legal right to free speech doesn’t protect all speech. But I would say the second conclusion is the main one.

___________

1. CORRECT. This directly paraphrases the conclusion and reasoning above. Legitimate = justifiable, prohibit = criminalization, on the grounds = since. The rest of the words are the same.
2. The conclusion didn’t say this. It said it’s justifiable to ban some forms of speech if they are “likely” to lead to harm. Certainty wasn’t required.
3. This mixes up terms from the argument. The author didn’t say banning speech leads to harm. They said speech can be banned if it is likely to lead to harm.
4. This might be true, in a contorted way. Like, if you say hello to a serial killer, maybe that will lead to serious harm (to you). But this wasn’t the argument the author was making. They only said the types of speech they listed were likely to lead to serious harm, and thus bannable.
5. This would be a completely different argument. I’ll give an example of what it would look like, to show it didn’t happen.
    
   Example of argument: Some people say we should ban speech of the following types: mean speech, controversial speech, stupid speech, false speech, speech inciting violence. But, only speech inciting violence can directly lead to harm. So only speech inciting violence should be banned.