Q20 - Business owner: Although allowing coal mining

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Role / Function

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Allowing coal mining in the regions would probably decrease the number of jobs locally.
Evidence: Many local businesses depend on this region's beauty, and the coal mining would force most of them to close.

Answer Anticipation:
I'm primarily trying to label a claim as MAIN CONC, SUPPORT, OPPOSING, or NEUTRAL.

The claim they're asking about was SUPPORT. Was it a regular ol' premise, or was it the mythical Intermediate Conclusion? We can wait to see answers to figure out whether we need to even care, but I would call it just a premise. There's no explicit support provided for "why we should believe that local businesses depend on beauty", so it can't be considered a conclusion. And, formally, the final two ideas are joined by "and", which always indicates that they're on the same level (i.e. both premises)

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) THIS IS THE ANSWER. I'm not happy about it, but it is. When I first typed this explanation, I argued for (B), and I didn't even bother to check the answer key, because I wasn't worried about whether (A) was wrong. Forum users had to warn me I had the wrong answer (thank you!). So, take my explanation with a thick crystal of Himalayan sea salt.

This agrees with (B), that the claim in question is a premise. They diverge in terms of whether this premise provides direct evidence for the conclusion, or whether it provides evidence for the final claim in the paragraph. The final claim says that "most of [these] businesses will be lost because of the heavy industrial activity of coal mining." Why would heavy industrial activity force most of these businesses to close? Because "these businesses depend on the region's natural beauty". This is the argument for (A).

(B) No, it's not direct support. It's partial support. It's support. But in order to be 'direct support', perhaps you need to have a tighter connection to the wording of the conclusion. 'Many businesses depend on the region's natural beauty' doesn't have any wording that directly in common with "whether coal mining will result in a net decrease in jobs". In order to bridge that gap, we need the idea that coal mining involves heavy industrial activity (and then we add an assumption that heavy industrial activity spoils a region's natural beauty).

(C) No, we can't call it a conclusion because there was no support offered for it.

(D) No, we can't call it a conclusion because there was no support offered for it. Also, the main conclusion is the 2nd half of the first sentence.

(E) No, there was no evidence offered for it. Also, it's not a hypothesis.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is the first exception I can remember when LSAT has ever connected premise to intermediate conclusion using the word "and". I'm shocked that they chose to have that misleading rhetorical connector, given how weak the 'supporting' connection is between those final two ideas. In order to connect the ideas, you need a pretty big assumption (yes, not outrageous, but far from automatic): "having heavy industrial activity in one part of your region spoils the region's natural beauty". It feels much more like two parallel premises to me. The final claim uses the pronoun "them", to refer to "the many local businesses that depend on natural beauty". So the final claim is saying "the heavy industrial activity of coal mining will force most of the many local businesses that depend on natural beauty to close". Why? Because "Many local businesses depend on natural beauty". That's the claim/support relationship that LSAT is selling in (A) and I think it's miserable.

They want us to feel the logical progression of "many businesses depend on the region's beauty, thus the heavy industrial activity of coal mining will force most of [these businesses I was just talking about] to close, therefore allowing coal mining would be a net decrease in jobs." However, to me, using that pronoun "them" in the final claim is problematic, because it then embeds the 'supporting' claim within that final claim. Well, I'm not sure we learned anything. I apologize. Usually "and" connects two premises, but if we can arrange the two claims in a logical "claim 1, therefore claim 2" format, then we can argue that one supports the other.


#officialexplanation

[N3rve_3644]

I had a very similar thought process that led me to selecting (B) during my timed take. Analogous to the way you dissected it, I saw two independent (the right word?) premises and a conclusion. I also very much agree with these two ideas:

the final two ideas are joined by "and", which always indicates that they're on the same level (i.e. both premises)

(A) No, this says we've got Prem -> Intermed Conc -> Conc. But we just have Prem + Prem -> Conc

I was shocked to see (A) as the correct answer in my answer key for this prep-test, and after a few days of looking at this question, I'm still trying to reconcile how it is the credited answer choice.

I could be very wrong, but, based on what is in Anticipation and Takeaway, I think you misread answer choice A - it does say that there is

Prem -> Intermed Conc -> Conc

, but it refers to the first clause of the last sentence as the premise, and the second clause as the intermediate conclusion.

I posted this about (A) somewhere else, and I don't think posting it here breaks forum rules, but if it does, please feel free to remove it:

I have an issue with AC A because I don't see how the argument's "sub-conclusion" draws from the stated claim. It seems to me that there is a need for an unstated assumption - something along the lines of "heavy industrial activity rids a region of its natural beauty". The part of the claim about dependence on natural beauty is a necessary condition for the operation of many local businesses. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but in order for the claim to be "direct" evidence for the argument's sub-conclusion, doesn't this sub-conclusion have to invoke the notion of how natural beauty would be tarnished in the presence of industrial activity? Without this notion, there could be many reasons why coal mining would force the majority of local businesses to close, one of which being (perhaps) the more lucrative or stable business opportunity of starting your own coal mine.

Also, it seems to me that the same unstated assumption mentioned above, needed (in my opinion) to classify the claim as "direct" evidence for the argument's sub-conclusion, can analogously be used to classify the claim as "direct" evidence for the argument's main conclusion: if coal mining harms natural beauty, then it seems reasonable to expect that coal mining would reduce the number of jobs since many local businesses depend on natural beauty.

Another LSAT-taker made a convincing argument in response to my comment as to why the mentioned claim is used to support the argument's "sub-conclusion", but I'm still on the edge about it. With the July LSAT approaching very soon, this question makes me anxious about my logical reasoning.

[AshleyT786]

Ok, so I chose B too at first even though I had doubts. So is B incorrect because each of those two premises cannot support the conclusion alone? Like they need to work in conjunction in order to support the conclusion.

[MaksR398]

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[MarkM701]

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