LSAT 151 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q8

QUESTION TEXT: A good movie reviewer should be able to give favorable…

QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion

CONCLUSION: A skilled movie reviewer ought to be able to give positive reviews of movies they don’t like.

REASONING: The role of movie reviewers is to help people find movies that they may enjoy. This is true even though reviewers’ taste is more informed and different than the taste of the general public.

ANALYSIS: At first I found this argument hard to explain using its structural words. They’re there: “Because, yet, not to”. However, these don’t clearly indicate the conclusion here the way a word like “thus” does.

The actual conclusion indicator is much subtler than those. I processed it correctly the first time I read it, but I didn’t notice it explicitly until I had read the argument 7-8 times: should.

This is a moral word, which generally indicates a conclusion on the LSAT. If something “should” be the case, then the rest of the argument is dedicated to justifying why that should be so.

In this case, film reviewers “should” give good reviews of movies they dislike, because:

• Their job is to help readers find movies they will enjoy.
• This is true even though film reviewers generally have better taste than their readers.

The final sentence is the likeliest alternative candidate for being the conclusion. It has the word “yet”, which is also a conclusion indicator. In an ideal world, you would just read the whole thing and “know” that the first sentence is the conclusion. But how do you get there, if you’re not there yet? Here’s a trick: take the two sentences, read them together, and ask which one seems to support the other. I.e. is it:

• Good movie reviewers should give favourable reviews to movies, because their role is to help people find movies they enjoy. Or
• Movie reviewers’ role is to help people find movies they enjoy, because a good movie reviewer should give favourable reviews to movies.

This may or may not do it for you, but for most people the first one will seem more sensible than the second. We should do something because of our role, and not the other way around.

___________

1. This is a counterpoint the author addresses, and dismisses. Yes, it’s true reviewers have better taste than the public. And yet, it is nonetheless reviewers job to help people find movies they will enjoy.
2. CORRECT. See the analysis above. The word “should” is an extremely strong conclusion indicator.
3. This is evidence supporting the conclusion: because the function of reviewers is different, they ought to give good reviews even of movies they personally dislike. Their role is to help people find enjoyable movies.
    
   (It is film critics who are free to try to educate us about our taste in movies)
4. This is a counterpoint the author addresses. Reviewers do have better taste than the general public, because they have seen more movies. And yet nonetheless, it is their role to help us find enjoyable movies, even if they personally dislike those movies.
5. This is tempting. It’s in the sentence with the word “yet”, and “yet” is often a conclusion indicator.
    
   On the other hand, “should”, in the first sentence, is also a conclusion indicator. When two sentences have conclusion indicators, you must ask yourself, which sentence supports the other? In other words, is it: “should give favourable reviews ➞ role is to help people enjoy”, or, is it “role is to help people enjoy ➞ should give favourable reviews”
    
   The second one is the more sensible argument: you usually can’t start from a “should”. So a sentence with should will typically be the final conclusion.

Quick Jump PT Section Que