Does anyone want to help me dissect this argument?
I got the correct answer (D) but am not 100% confident in it. I was able to eliminate the remaining 4 choices, but to be completly honest, I don't understand why (D) is even correct and don't get the core for this. Is the conclusion the first sentence?
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- LSAT-Chang
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Re: Q13 - Mayor: The law prohibiting pedestrians
changsoyeon Wrote:Does anyone want to help me dissect this argument?
I got the correct answer (D) but am not 100% confident in it. I was able to eliminate the remaining 4 choices, but to be completly honest, I don't understand why (D) is even correct and don't get the core for this. Is the conclusion the first sentence?
I'll give it a try.
Conclusion: Law prohibiting pedestrians from crossing red lights serves no useful purpose.
Why? Those who violate the law are not dissuaded, and those who obey the law never cross red lights and therefore, don't need the law
Flaw: Assumes there are only those who violate and those who don't. What about the maybe's? The ones on the fence about violating or not violating... "Maybe I'll cross the red light today, but... there's that law -- Okay then, I won't do it."
(D) May dissuade those who sometimes, but not always cross red lights
(A) No, we are told some people do not obey the law
(B) Not true. This type of answer choice is usually, but not always, wrong
(C) We are concerned with how the law could serve some useful purpose, i.e., contrary to the conclusion
(E) "more dangerous" = out of scope
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- LSAT-Chang
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q13 - Mayor: The law prohibiting pedestrians
Thanks so much for your help!! Now I see the actual core. I was confused for awhile because of the "after all, in order to serve a useful purpose, a law must deter the kind of behavior it prohibits" and didn't know where that fit into. But now I can see that the evidence can be summed up into one:
The law prohibiting pedestrians from crossing against red lights serves no useful purpose. Why? Because this law doesn't deter people from violating it and even the ones who comply with it don't need it.
GOT IT!
Thanks chike_eze!!
The law prohibiting pedestrians from crossing against red lights serves no useful purpose. Why? Because this law doesn't deter people from violating it and even the ones who comply with it don't need it.
GOT IT!
Thanks chike_eze!!-
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Re: Q13 - Mayor: The law prohibiting pedestrians
Hi,
Can someone please explain what is (C) saying in English?
Cheers,M
Can someone please explain what is (C) saying in English?
Cheers,M
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- sumukh09
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q13 - Mayor: The law prohibiting pedestrians
C) says the opposite of what we're looking for. The argument says
Serve useful purpose --> deter behaviour
whereas C) is saying
deter behaviour --> not serve useful purpose which is a negation and reversal of
serve useful purpose ---> deter behaviour
Serve useful purpose --> deter behaviour
whereas C) is saying
deter behaviour --> not serve useful purpose which is a negation and reversal of
serve useful purpose ---> deter behaviour
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- WaltGrace1983
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Re: Q13 - Mayor: The law prohibiting pedestrians
This one made me think and I have an odd obsession with writing about answers...hopefully it will all lead me to LSAT glory (or just a diminishing social life)
To be useful, law must deter prohibited behavior
+
Those who "invariably" violate this law aren’t deterred
+
Those who never cross against red lights do not need it
→
The law does not have useful purpose
So let’s break down a bit of what it is going on here. We get some conditional logic in the first premise: Useful → Deter / ~Deter → ~Useful. Cool. Now we get a stimulus that talks about two different people. There are some that never cross regardless of the law and there are some that will always cross regardless of the law (or lack of the law). So from this, we are concluding that it just simply is not useful because the law doesn’t deter anyone! It doesn’t deter the people who don’t follow the law regardless and it doesn’t deter the people who always follow the law because they seemingly follow the law due to their own conscience. But wait. We are only talking about people that act "invariably." Couldn’t it still be possible that the law does deter some people? I am not the kind of guy that crosses irregardless but I am also not the guy who doesn’t cross even when there is no law (my semester abroad will tell you that _ I was nearly hit by many a car). So what about people like me: those people who don’t cross BECAUSE it’s a law? We are going to get somewhere with this thought I think.
(A) There are two problems with this answer choice: "most" and "automobile drivers." Let’s start with the drivers...where does it say anything about drivers in the stimulus? The whole stimulus is talking about pedestrians it seems! Furthermore, how can we conclude something about most people, eh? We couldn’t even conclude something about most pedestrians!
(B) This...just.....no. The argument is simply not doing that, I don’t really have any other reason than sense.
I am going to skip C and D and come back to them in a second
(E) Why are we talking about "green lights" here? Who cares if it is more or less dangerous. Get outta here!
Now let’s come back to the most difficult answer choices...C and D.
(C) Is very LSAT-y. It looks so tempting. Why? Because it is all that turned around language that we have probably, in the past, eliminated but found it to be the correct answer after deconstructing it. These are always the hardest answer choices to eliminate because of their "LSAT-like" nature. This is all my opinion, of course. Let’s look at this. Let’s look at "even if" specifically." This is a phrase that has got me a little twisted and I hope that I got this right now. Someone tell me if I am wrong.
"Even if" refers to the premise. It really is not too different from "if" but some subtleties do exist that we cannot just chalk it up as an "if" with a useless word appended to it. That is, "even if" refers to the assumption of the argument. Mary Adkins did an article on this word so I am going to paraphrase here while giving her all of the credit (somewhat because plagiarism is bad but mostly because it is friggin’ awesome). The article is here.
Lets say we have a simple flaw question that says, "The store did not hit its revenue goal. The store was unprofitable."
(A) "The argument fails to consider that the store could still be profitable even if it did not hit its revenue goal."
(B) "The argument fails to consider that even if the store did hit its revenue goal, it would be profitable.
(C) "The argument ignores that even if the store was profitable, it could still not have made revenue"
(A) looks good. After all, couldn’t the store not sell a lot of core items but sold a lot of services that was sheer profit? There could be many reasons why not making revenue is not a death sentence for actually making money. Revenue does not equal profit.
(B) also looks good! However, what Mary’s article tells us is the following: "because we don’t have a premise telling us that [the store DID hit its revenue goal] you’d get rid of that answer." Why is this? Because the "even if" refers to something that is already assumed _ a premise! The argument only assumes that the store "did not hit its revenue goal." The argument never assumes anything about what happens if the store DOES hit its revenue goal _ this is not a premise!
(C) Another tricky answer! Let’s look at it. For similar reasons that we eliminated (B) we can eliminate (C). "Even if" is supposed to refer to the assumption _ the premise. "Even if" in (C) refers to a backwards of the conclusion. We can eliminate this too (in a much quicker fashion then if we didn’t know about this logical lesson)!
Let’s go back to the original argument...
~Deter some people → ~Useful
Useful → Deters some people
Answer choice (C) states "Even if it does deter the kind of behavior it prohibits...the law might not serve a useful purpose." It looks like (C) has got it all backwards again! EVEN IF refers to the assumption and we know that the assumption in this argument is "does not deter some people." Yet in (C) "even if" is referring to "DOES deter." This is wrong. We could only make this answer choice right if we said "EVEN IF it doesn’t deter some people..."
A correct answer choice, I believe, would be "The argument fails to consider that even if it doesn’t deter some people, the law could still otherwise be useful." It could also be "the argument fails to consider that even though the law doesn’t deter ALL people, it could still be useful." However, this leads to one question: can there every be a time when the correct answer choice for this question starts with "Even if it is useful", aka the contrapositive? I don’t think so (at least I cannot think of anything that would be right) but I’d love to know!
*notice how there is a little bit of a difference between the premise's conditional statement and the argument. This is key to understand I think. The PREMISE is stating (useful→deter) while the ARGUMENT as a whole is saying (~deter some people→~useful). We don't know it it doesn't deter EVERYONE and this is the key to...
answer choice (D), the correct one. (D) is saying that the argument fails to consider that it actually may dissuade people who do not ALWAYS act in one way or another. After that exhaustive reasoning why all the other choices are wrong...just pick it and move on because the time ran out 20 minutes ago
To be useful, law must deter prohibited behavior
+
Those who "invariably" violate this law aren’t deterred
+
Those who never cross against red lights do not need it
→
The law does not have useful purpose
So let’s break down a bit of what it is going on here. We get some conditional logic in the first premise: Useful → Deter / ~Deter → ~Useful. Cool. Now we get a stimulus that talks about two different people. There are some that never cross regardless of the law and there are some that will always cross regardless of the law (or lack of the law). So from this, we are concluding that it just simply is not useful because the law doesn’t deter anyone! It doesn’t deter the people who don’t follow the law regardless and it doesn’t deter the people who always follow the law because they seemingly follow the law due to their own conscience. But wait. We are only talking about people that act "invariably." Couldn’t it still be possible that the law does deter some people? I am not the kind of guy that crosses irregardless but I am also not the guy who doesn’t cross even when there is no law (my semester abroad will tell you that _ I was nearly hit by many a car). So what about people like me: those people who don’t cross BECAUSE it’s a law? We are going to get somewhere with this thought I think.
(A) There are two problems with this answer choice: "most" and "automobile drivers." Let’s start with the drivers...where does it say anything about drivers in the stimulus? The whole stimulus is talking about pedestrians it seems! Furthermore, how can we conclude something about most people, eh? We couldn’t even conclude something about most pedestrians!
(B) This...just.....no. The argument is simply not doing that, I don’t really have any other reason than sense.
I am going to skip C and D and come back to them in a second
(E) Why are we talking about "green lights" here? Who cares if it is more or less dangerous. Get outta here!
Now let’s come back to the most difficult answer choices...C and D.
(C) Is very LSAT-y. It looks so tempting. Why? Because it is all that turned around language that we have probably, in the past, eliminated but found it to be the correct answer after deconstructing it. These are always the hardest answer choices to eliminate because of their "LSAT-like" nature. This is all my opinion, of course. Let’s look at this. Let’s look at "even if" specifically." This is a phrase that has got me a little twisted and I hope that I got this right now. Someone tell me if I am wrong.
"Even if" refers to the premise. It really is not too different from "if" but some subtleties do exist that we cannot just chalk it up as an "if" with a useless word appended to it. That is, "even if" refers to the assumption of the argument. Mary Adkins did an article on this word so I am going to paraphrase here while giving her all of the credit (somewhat because plagiarism is bad but mostly because it is friggin’ awesome). The article is here.
Lets say we have a simple flaw question that says, "The store did not hit its revenue goal. The store was unprofitable."
(A) "The argument fails to consider that the store could still be profitable even if it did not hit its revenue goal."
(B) "The argument fails to consider that even if the store did hit its revenue goal, it would be profitable.
(C) "The argument ignores that even if the store was profitable, it could still not have made revenue"
(A) looks good. After all, couldn’t the store not sell a lot of core items but sold a lot of services that was sheer profit? There could be many reasons why not making revenue is not a death sentence for actually making money. Revenue does not equal profit.
(B) also looks good! However, what Mary’s article tells us is the following: "because we don’t have a premise telling us that [the store DID hit its revenue goal] you’d get rid of that answer." Why is this? Because the "even if" refers to something that is already assumed _ a premise! The argument only assumes that the store "did not hit its revenue goal." The argument never assumes anything about what happens if the store DOES hit its revenue goal _ this is not a premise!
(C) Another tricky answer! Let’s look at it. For similar reasons that we eliminated (B) we can eliminate (C). "Even if" is supposed to refer to the assumption _ the premise. "Even if" in (C) refers to a backwards of the conclusion. We can eliminate this too (in a much quicker fashion then if we didn’t know about this logical lesson)!
Let’s go back to the original argument...
~Deter some people → ~Useful
Useful → Deters some people
Answer choice (C) states "Even if it does deter the kind of behavior it prohibits...the law might not serve a useful purpose." It looks like (C) has got it all backwards again! EVEN IF refers to the assumption and we know that the assumption in this argument is "does not deter some people." Yet in (C) "even if" is referring to "DOES deter." This is wrong. We could only make this answer choice right if we said "EVEN IF it doesn’t deter some people..."
A correct answer choice, I believe, would be "The argument fails to consider that even if it doesn’t deter some people, the law could still otherwise be useful." It could also be "the argument fails to consider that even though the law doesn’t deter ALL people, it could still be useful." However, this leads to one question: can there every be a time when the correct answer choice for this question starts with "Even if it is useful", aka the contrapositive? I don’t think so (at least I cannot think of anything that would be right) but I’d love to know!
*notice how there is a little bit of a difference between the premise's conditional statement and the argument. This is key to understand I think. The PREMISE is stating (useful→deter) while the ARGUMENT as a whole is saying (~deter some people→~useful). We don't know it it doesn't deter EVERYONE and this is the key to...
answer choice (D), the correct one. (D) is saying that the argument fails to consider that it actually may dissuade people who do not ALWAYS act in one way or another. After that exhaustive reasoning why all the other choices are wrong...just pick it and move on because the time ran out 20 minutes ago
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Re: Q13 - Mayor: The law prohibiting pedestrians
Premise 1: Those who consistently break the law are not deterred by it
Premise 2: Those who consistently obey the law do not need it since they would have done so even if no law existed against it
Sub-conclusion: In order for a law to be serve a useful prupose, it must deter some of the behaviour it prohibits.
Conclusion: The law prohibiting pedestrians from crossing against red lights serves no useful purpose.
Flaw: Presents a false dichotomy to justify the conclusion. The author erroneously partitions the populous into those who always violate the law and those who never do. What about those who sometimes jay-walk but don't on other occasions due to the law in question?
(A) The argument also fails to consider that those who break the law are more likely to recieve tickets. Descriptively accurate but completely irrelevant as to why the argument is wrong.
(B) It doesn't use the word law or any other polysemic term differently in the premise and conclusion.
(C) same as (B)
(D) Bingo
(E) It also fails to provide evidence that those who consistently break the law are more likely to be hit by cars. This is descriptively accurate due to the limited scope of the question stem but irrelevant as to why the argument is flawed.
Premise 2: Those who consistently obey the law do not need it since they would have done so even if no law existed against it
Sub-conclusion: In order for a law to be serve a useful prupose, it must deter some of the behaviour it prohibits.
Conclusion: The law prohibiting pedestrians from crossing against red lights serves no useful purpose.
Flaw: Presents a false dichotomy to justify the conclusion. The author erroneously partitions the populous into those who always violate the law and those who never do. What about those who sometimes jay-walk but don't on other occasions due to the law in question?
(A) The argument also fails to consider that those who break the law are more likely to recieve tickets. Descriptively accurate but completely irrelevant as to why the argument is wrong.
(B) It doesn't use the word law or any other polysemic term differently in the premise and conclusion.
(C) same as (B)
(D) Bingo
(E) It also fails to provide evidence that those who consistently break the law are more likely to be hit by cars. This is descriptively accurate due to the limited scope of the question stem but irrelevant as to why the argument is flawed.
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