30 LR One Question 21
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I can't seem to see find the difference between A and B. They seem to say the exact same thing to me. I chose C.
(A) and (B) are inverted.
They have the exact same relationship to each other as do these two statements:
Most poodles are white dogs,
and
Most white dogs are poodles.
Clearer now?
Isn't B also incorrect because it talks about party members, whereas A and the passage talk about party leaders specifically?
Edit: Sorry, didn't realize this had been asked already!
I chose E and I'm still confused why A is better
(E) tells us about bills that have been passed. We're trying to prove a conclusion about a bill that won't pass, so that evidence isn't helpful to us.
Or it may help to think of it this way: say (E) is true, and most bills that are passed have support, and then also most bills that aren't passed have support. If that's all true, then the question of support is meaningless, and doesn't help the argument.
Does the fact that choice B uses the words " party members" instead of "party leaders" also make it a worse choice?
I'm not sure it matters in this instance (i.e., I don't think it would improve the answer to substitute the word "leader"), but that's nevertheless a good catch—there will certainly be instances in which there is a salient shift between the content of the argument and the content of a purported answer.
Keep up the good work!
What if answer choice E says "All bills that have been passed ..." instead of saying "most"? Can I choose it then?
No; (E) tells us about bills that have been passed. We're trying to prove a conclusion about a bill that won't pass, so that evidence isn't helpful to us.
Think about it this way: All the people who are in the NBA are men. Does that tell us anything at all about the people who aren't in the NBA?
Sorry for the question, but i'm still confused.
IF (E) says: All bills passed were supported.
The contrapositive: If a bill was not supported, then it will not pass.
This is exactly the conclusion in the question stem, right?
Ugh. There is a VERY GOOD chance that I have given you a poor explanation here. I wrote my answer while traveling without my LSAT PrepTests, but I thought I remembered that particular question well enough to answer you without looking at the text. Based on your response, maybe I didn't.
I wanted to wait until I was back in the office with the actual question in front of me to respond to you, but my wife and son were too sick to fly home yesterday and the next available flight isn't until next weekend. I apologize in advance for the extra delay!
I will say that what you've written here does look correct, and again, it's possible that my original answer didn't comport with the precise meaning of the argument in question. So there's a real chance that it's not you, it's me this time.
I'll holla back in a few days.
Hope you're having a lovely holiday season,
d
Thanks, Dave! Hope your son gets well. Happy holidays!
OK, your confusion is totally understandable. These answers all look a bit like conditional statements. However, even if they included the conditional "all", that necessary condition only applies to the past bills, not necessarily to future bills.
It may help to assign some more specific scenarios:
If (A) is true, then we know that in the past, most bills without support have not passed. That certainly doesn't prove that this bill won't pass, but it makes it a little more likely, since we've seen again and again in the past that most bills without support don't pass.
If (E) is true (even with the word "all"), then we know what happened to the bills that were passed in the past. But we don't know anything about those that weren't passed! It's entirely possible that all the bills that weren't passed were also supported. If that's true, then (E) gives us no precedent for an unsupported bill, and therefore doesn't help us.
Now, if (E) were more broadly conditional (if it didn't just talk about all the past bills, but instead all bills)—"All bills passed into law must be supported by at least one leader," then your thinking here absolutely would obtain and (E) would prove the conclusion is true.
Is that clearer?
Would you say, Dave, that the means to strengthening a prediction on the LSAT is to appeal to past results? If not, then what is? If so, is it not a logical fallacy to argue that future results will necessarily follow past results? If the latter is true, then has the LSAT asked test-takers to assert a logically flawed assumption here to support a prediction? If so, with what frequency does this occur?
Yes, one way of strengthening a future prediction is by appeal to past results (see: all of science).
It is definitely a logical fallacy to argue that future results will necessarily follow past results.
But there is no contradiction here; to strengthen is not the same thing as to prove. Strengthening a claim means only that you're making it more likely to be true.
I understand why (A) is right. Why is answer choice (C) is wrong?
(C) gives us a condition for passing a bill. Here, we're trying to prove the bill will not pass.
For example, if we want to prove that Chris is not in Florida, it doesn't help to say that everyone in Miami is in Florida.
Make sense?