LSAT 149 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Computer modeling of reasoning tasks is far easier…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify

CONCLUSION: We understand our mind’s reasoning abilities better than we understand our senses.

REASONING: We can model our reasoning abilities better than we can model our senses.

ANALYSIS: To justify this argument we should show a link between modelling and understanding. These two terms specifically. Several other answer link together two other terms, but it has to be the two above, as “modelling” and “understanding” were the ones mentioned in the reasoning and conclusion.

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1. The conclusion talks about how well we understand a thing in our minds. This answer doesn’t mention understanding, so it can’t help prove the conclusion. Ease of performance wasn’t mentioned in the stimulus. It may be easy to imagine an apple, but hard to describe how we do it.
2. We’re supposed to talk about how easy it is to understand something. This talks about how easy it is to understand how to perform something. Those are different things. The stimulus didn’t talk about understanding how to perform a thing.
    
   Further, the stimulus made a split between understanding reasoning vs. other senses. This answer doesn’t even address the senses directly.
    
   Examples of this answer vs. stimulus:
    
   Stimulus: How well do we understand the logic of our brains vs. how well do we understand how smell works? ➞ I can understand how I reason because I can model that, but I have no idea how I smell.
    
   This answer: How well we understand a computer’s ability to perform logic increases our ability to understand our ability to perform logic. own logic. ➞ I understand that a computer performs logic well and quickly because it has a powerful computer chip. I as a human don’t have such a computer chip, so accordingly I don’t expect to be able to perform logic as well as that computer.
    
   As you can see, this answer’s talk of performance really has nothing to do with what the stimulus was talking about.
3. The conclusion was about understanding our minds. The computer’s ability to beat us was just an example illustrating that it’s easier to program a computer for reasoning tasks.
4. CORRECT. In less abstract terms, this means: if we can understand how to program a computer for something (like reasoning), then we can also more easily understand how our own mental process of that type works (e.g. reasoning)
5. The conclusion was about which type of human cognition was easier to understand. This answer only talks about cognition in general, and doesn’t specify which type.

Recap: The question begins with “Computer modeling of reasoning tasks is far easier”. It is a Principle Justify question. Learn more about LSAT Principle Justify questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.