Q25 - The publisher of a best-selling

[willaminic]

Hi, this question confuses me a lot...

The core of the argument is Knowing made a false claim----> not unethical

So A is contrapostive? ethical ----> not knowing made a false claim

Kinda confused , and why is D wrong?

any help please?

[timmydoeslsat]

In important point in all of this is to consider that we are to pick a principle that will help justify the reasoning used.

Choice D goes off the tracks by stating "only if there is a possibility that someone will act as if the claim might be true." We do not know if we have this or do not have this. We know that people do not believe the claim is true, but we do not know that people do not act as if it were true.

The reasoning used in this argument is:

Everyone knows that the author made a claim that cannot be true.

Therefore, should not be considered unethical.


So I am expecting to have a principle to give me this framing:

Unethical ---> Whatever condition

I am wanting to see this "Whatever condition" be something that I can deny to use the contrapositive. That is, to show that this situation is not unethical.

This is what A does:

Unethical ---> Reasonable to accept claim as true

We know we have ~Reasonable to accept claim as true.

This is because we know that everyone knows the claim cannot be true.

This allows us to conclude that this behavior is something that is ~Unethical, which is what our conclusion is.

Other answer choices:

B) Gives us the wrong structure off of the bat.

Whatever condition ----> Unethical

I will never be able to arrive at the idea of ~Unethical. If I meet the "Whatever condition" in this conditional, I would arrive at unethical.

That will not help me conclude something is ~Unethical.

And if I do not have "Whatever condition"...I cannot conclude ~Unethical. I am simply unable to be led to the idea of ~Unethical in this framing of a conditional.

C) Somewhat tempting. This has a framing structure that can be seen as potentially useful.

Unethical ---> Those who accept claim as true suffer a hardship greater than the gain they were anticipating

In my opinion, this answer choice is tempting because we are led to infer that not one person accepts the claim as true. However, this necessary condition talks about hardship and gain, and these ideas were not used in the reasoning of the argument.

E) At least those cases = unethical will not help us conclude something is ~unethical.

[bbirdwell]

Let's be clear about our task: Find a general rule that supports the reasoning in the argument, that is, a rule that supports going from the given premise to the stated claim.

Which is to say, we want to support this idea:
stuff happened and a publisher made false claim --> this not unethical

On glancing at the choices, it's clear that they are all conditional statements of sorts, so a quick "ballpark" diagram of each choice might prove quite helpful.

(A) false claim is unethical --> reasonable for people to accept claim

(B) deriving gain from expense of others while making a false claim --> unethical

(C) false claim is unethical --> those who accept claim have more hardship than gain

(D) false claim is unethical --> possibility someone will act as if claim is true

(E) person must act as if claim were true in order to discover its falsity --> unethical


Whew! That may have been a bit of a slog due to the weird language, but note how everything has to do with matching some kind of situation with unethical/ethical.

Our argument ends with "NOT unethical." Therefore all choices that end with "unethical" can be eliminated right off the bat. There go (B) and (E).

Now, every other choices BEGINS with "unethical," which would match the contrapositive of our given. Notice how all of the remaining choices have more to do with the "stuff that happened" (ie the details above), so we're gonna have to check that stuff out, too.

(A) Let's contrapose it to better match our argument:
NOT reasonable for people to accept the claim --> NOT unethical.
Our original matches the right side perfectly. The question is, did the original argument say that is wasn't reasonable to accept the claim? Yes!! It said "everyone knows the book can't deliver..."

If everyone knows better, it's unreasonable for anyone to accept it. This is our answer.

(C) is very similar to (A). Let's contrapose it and then check out the left side. Does the original argument say whether people will have more hardship than gain? No, it doesn't say anything about this. Eliminate!

(D) is similar as well. Contrapose, and check out the left side. Did our argument say there was NO possibility of anyone ACTING as though the claim were true? Nope. It didn't say nobody would act on the book's advice -- it just said everybody knows better. Subtle but meaningful difference.

Hope that helps!

[WaltGrace1983]

I really liked the analysis going on here. From what I have gathered, (B) and (E) are wrong because they don't match up to the conditional provided in the stimulus - they conclude "unethical" when we need to conclude "~unethical." Eliminate. (C) and (D) introduce new stuff into the premises that aren't talked about, i.e. "suffering a greater hardship" and "acting as if the claim might be true" (there is a gap between "acting" and "believing")

I would like to dig deeper into (B) though. (B) is a really interesting answer choice, not because of the reasons that it is wrong, but because of the reasons why it might be right. (B) says the following:

Making the claim derive a gain at the expense of those acting as if the claim were true → Unethical.

Now of course it is wrong because it concludes the opposite. I wonder though, if it concluded "~unethical" could it be a right answer choice? The only thing I would be hesitant about is the idea of the people "acting as if the claim were true." As I said, there is a divide between "believing" and "acting."

Now why am I being nitpicking about this? Maybe I am really just trying to ask the question (because I feel like this will come up eventually in my LSAT studies), is the author someone who 'derives a gain' here? I am assuming so considering the book is "best-selling," implying that there is some benefit that the author is getting even if the book was free!

[sepa9797]

I feel that the solution to this answer has been complicated a bit more then it needs to. All you need to do is ask why the author doesn't think that the publisher's claim is unethical. It's simply because everyone knows about the nuances of the claim, if someone didn't know then they would be susceptible to being taken advantage of by the publisher. That's why A is right, the author would say, "Hey that's messed up, there are people out here who don't understand what you're really doing!"