Q18 - Advocate: You claim that it

[gilad.bendheim]

I think I out-thinked myself on this one, but how is (D) the correct choice? The principle it provides is that "one should not support an organization that DOES anything one believes to be wrong." But the only that we know about the person being described by the advocate is that he thinks "it is wrong to OWN gas powered cars." The company, on the other hand, manufactures them, but we know nothing about them owning them. Thus, it doesn't really DO the thing that he thinks as wrong, as much as supports or enables that action. Because this was question 18, I had thought this was some trap (otherwise, it seemed way too easy), but apparently not.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

[LSAT-Chang]

I think I out-thinked myself on this one, but how is (D) the correct choice? The principle it provides is that "one should not support an organization that DOES anything one believes to be wrong." But the only that we know about the person being described by the advocate is that he thinks "it is wrong to OWN gas powered cars." The company, on the other hand, manufactures them, but we know nothing about them owning them. Thus, it doesn't really DO the thing that he thinks as wrong, as much as supports or enables that action. Because this was question 18, I had thought this was some trap (otherwise, it seemed way too easy), but apparently not.

Thoughts?

Thanks.

Hmm.. I must agree with your point in that you definitely over-thought this. I never thought about this problem in that detail, but I can see what you mean by "own" not necessarily equaling to "manufacture" (didn't think of it in this detail when I approached this problem). But I think what is also important here is the reason WHY the "person" believes owning gasoline-powered cars is wrong -- it's because it pollutes too much. But the company is making these cars that pollute too much, so the advocate is concluding that the "person" shouldn't have an electric car as well. So we can see the gap which is namely that you shouldn't support a company if it's doing something you think is wrong (in this case, what is "wrong" is that you are owning something that pollutes too much). So I think (D) fits nicely with what we are looking for and closes the gap. Another thing I want to mention is that with this problem in particular, just looking at the other four answer choices -- they suck. I myself didn't circle (D) upon reading it even though I could see it being the correct answer because I wanted to make sure (E) wasn't a "better" choice obviously -- and upon reading (E) it sucked, so I chose (D) confidently. I also thought this problem was a bit easy to be #18, so I did have doubts at first -- but I stopped doubting once I read through all the other crappy answers Hope this helps!

[michael.gorshein]

I'm confused as to why the answer is not A.

The answer D is not totally satisfactory for me because of the clause that says "if you are right about gasoline-powered cars..."

When I read that part of that sentence, I thought, "So if he was wrong about gasoline-powered cars, then the comment "you should not have your electric car either" may not actually follow?" In other words, part of what matters here seemed to me is whether your belief in gasoline-powered cars' tendency to overpollute is actually true or not... because the advocate inserts that "if you are right" comment... But answer choice D keeps your belief divorced from the prospect of whether the belief is actually right or not... and therefore seems somewhat inconsistent with what the advocate is actually saying.

In other words, answer choice D would make more sense to me if the last sentence simply read, "thus, you should not have your electric car either." I guess answer choice A isn't a brilliant answer choice, but D seemed fishy to me, too.

[raziel]

Good point. But I think the conclusion is stronger than anything that can be proved by answer choice (A). Notice that (A) uses "can be wrong". Is that enough to prove that "you should not"?

It seems to me that the introduction of the "if you are right" works in the passage by trying to remove doubt that the main issue in the argument would be with questioning the evidence provided by the Advocate, "You claim it is wrong...because..they pollute too much". If the opponent is right about this, then we shouldn't worry about whether he is right or not.

Notice that the biggest gap when you are reading is that the Advocate is trying to prove that the opponent should not have his electric car either. The evidence? His patronage also benefits a producer of objectionable products. This seems to be a very big gap in order to reach the conclusion.

If the opponent is not right about gasoline powered cars, then I don't think we can reach any conclusion at all.

[faronowitz]

Would another reason that (A) is wrong be that "owning a car" doesn't really imply "action"? To me, owning a car seems like a state of being or having as opposed to performing an action. Just trying to clarify why wrong answer choices are wrong. Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

Let’s put up a complete explanation

Question type: Principle Support

===== Argument core =======
Conc: You shouldn’t have your electric car

(why?)

Prem: The company that made your electric car also makes millions of heavily polluting gas-powered vehicles, so your patronage of the company benefits a producer of a product you don’t like.
=========================

What idea do we need to get us from the Premise to the Conclusion? This guy seems to think that if a company makes any product you don’t like, then it’s wrong to buy any of the company’s other products.

For example,
If Apple makes land mines that I object to, then I shouldn’t buy an iPod.

So we need something like:
if a company makes a product you don’t like, you shouldn’t patronize that company by buying another one of the company’s products.

The extremely lovable thing about Principle Support questions is that correct answers are almost always 1/2 premise, 1/2 conclusion (i.e. we should be able to match up some of the language in the answer to the premise, and some of the language to the conclusion).

(A) "an action can be wrong" matches up somewhat with the Conclusion: "˜you should not have your electric car’. But does "fewer negative consequences" match up with anything said in the Premise? No. Be vigilant! You don’t have to tell yourself a story like, "owning an electric car probably has fewer negative consequences than owning a gas powered car". The correct answer will much more explicitly match what was said.

(B) This conditional rule says
Should purchase "”> pollutes less than any competing product
The contrapositive would allow us to prove "should NOT purchase", so we should check it out.
Doesn’t pollute less than any competing product "”> should not purchase

The 2nd half beautifully matches our conclusion ... "you should not purchase the electric car".
Can we match up the 1st half?
Were we told in the premise that "electric cars DON’T pollute less than any competing product"?
No, we were told the opposite. Electric cars DO pollute less than gas powered cars.

(C) This conditional says
Product has no negative consequences "”> you should purchase it.
This rule is useless to us. We’re trying to prove a conclusion that "you should NOT purchase it".
This rule will never allow us to get "you should NOT purchase it" on the right hand side.

correct answer: (D) This conditional says
An organization does anything you believe to be wrong "”> you should not support it.
The conclusion is close enough to match up with "you should not have your electric car". We’ve already established that buying an electric car is patronizing (i.e. "˜supporting’) the company that makes gas-powered vehicles.
Does the 1st half of the conditional match the premise? Is the company who makes your electric car "an organization that does something you believe to be wrong"? Yes. It is a "˜producer of products to which you object’. This also basically matches our pre-phrase of "if a company makes any product you find objectionable, you shouldn’t buy other products from that company". Choice (D) is actually stronger than what we were looking for, but there’s no such thing as "˜too strong’ when a question asks you "which of the following, if true, ..."

(E) This conditional says
A company makes no environmentally sound products "”> shouldn’t buy products from it.

The 2nd half works again, but the 1st half fails to match. We know the company in the stimulus makes electric cars, which are presumably environmentally sound. Even if we argued that electric cars are not environmentally sound, we still have no text to justify that we KNOW that this company makes NO environmentally sound products.

Hope this helps.