LSAT 153 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Environmental ethicist: Since whooping cranes, unlike sandhill…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle

CONCLUSION: We have a greater duty to protect the life of any individual whooping crane than the life of any individual sandhill crane.

REASONING: Whooping cranes are endangered while sandhill cranes are not. Therefore, the survival of any individual whooping crane is more important to the preservation of its species.

ANALYSIS: Lets look at the logic of the argument and any assumptions implicit in it. The basis of whooping cranes being more important than sandhill cranes is that they are endangered. Thus, the argument basically relies on the idea that being a member of an endangered species makes that life more important to preserve than other, non-endangered species. Importantly, this is because they are more important to preserving the species as a whole. The principle should be some close approximation to this idea.

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1. This answer is saying that the duty to protect individual life is unrelated to protecting the species of the individual. This goes against our argument, which says that the species is important, because we should prioritize endangered species.
2. CORRECT. See analysis. This matches up perfectly with our argument. As the importance of species survival increases, so does the duty to preserve individual life.
3. The argument doesn’t mention anything about the importance of being closely related to other species, so this is irrelevant.
4. The argument never compares the two duties of individual and species protection. The argument takes a species being endangered as being a reason to choose protecting one individual of a species over another individual of a different species.
5. This is close to the right answer, but the argument never says that this is the only case when we have greater duties. There might be other good reasons for having a greater duty in other scenarios.

Recap: The question begins with “Environmental ethicist: Since whooping cranes, unlike sandhill”. It is a Principle question. Learn how to master LSAT Principle questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.