Q26 - People should patronize businesses that meet

[christine.defenbaugh]

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: if "notably ethical action", then media should publicize.
Evidence: 1: people should use businesses that "meet high ethical standards"
2: media should assist in that
3: hearing about "ethical conduct" --> people patronize

Answer Anticipation:
We could be more aggressive about separating the premises into unsupported premises and intermediate conclusions, but for a first pass, this should be sufficient. If we need to be more specific about that logic, we can dig deeper after running some eliminations.
There's some terminology fuzziness around ethics here - the author's playing a little loose with the language matchups. We should be concerned about whether "meet high ethical standards," "notably ethical action[s]," and "ethical conduct" are all the same. The last a general terms that seems to catch everything, while the other two phrases are more specific - and they don't necessarily mean the same thing, or apply to the same businesses. Someone might meet high standards without performing any particularly notable single action, and one could perform one awesome action without meeting high standards as a general matter. Classic term shift, hidden by complex ideas and mushy language.

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) This answer would be capitalizing on a term shift between having high standards and actually meeting those standards - but simply having high standards was never raised in the stimulus. Out of scope!

(B) It's okay if this one didn't immediately jump out as addressing the term shift noted above. The way to save ourselves is to make sure this survives our first pass, then circle back to read it more deeply. This answer defines "meeting high ethical standards" as "refraining from unethical behavior". Why does that matter? Because it means "meeting high ethical standards" is unlikely to produce "notably ethical action[s]" - and the further apart we drive those concepts, the more problematic the term shift between them is in the argument! News media would be publicizing the businesses that did the flashy single actions, and those businesses may not actually be the ones out there meeting the high ethical standards (that we think people should patronize!).

(C) Setting one's own ethical standards sounds on point, but it's actually out of scope - the argument only addresses meeting high ethical standards, not just meeting your own standards.

(D) Everything in the argument stays in the lane of what news media should do and why, while this answer focuses on what they are currently likely to do - out of scope!

(E) This one is tempting if you're trying to look into the true heart of the business to see if they are doing the ethical things for the right reasons (i.e., would do them even if unprofitable). But this question of 'what's in their hearts' is irrelevant to the argument. The argument has already accepted that people should patronize a business that meets high ethical standards. That's a premise! And since it's stated as a blanket rule, it means the argument accepts that people should patronize those businesses regardless of the motivations of the business, or their 'true heart'. Motivations of the business are out of scope!

Takeaway/Pattern:
Term shift is a classic reasoning error, and it can come in all flavors from easy to very hard. Term shifts from "potatoes" to "dancing" are far easier to spot, and are likely to feature on earlier questions. Later term shifts are likely to dig into complex ideas, making them harder to spot. Remember, it's not the change in language alone that makes it a term shift - it has to also be a shift in ideas - but a language change can alert us to investigate the ideas!

#officialexplanation

[RuonanW40]

I am sorry but I don't quite understand your explanation for why B is correct. I understand that there is a term shift error in the stimulus, but I can't see how B spot this error. May you explain more about B?
If "meet high ethical standards" is in a supporting premises (which means we should assume it is a fact and it is correct in a lsat sense), and "performs a notably ethical action" is in the conclusion, so the term shift error means that "perform..." is not the same as "meet....". Shouldn't the weaken argument be something like "performing a notable ethical action is a matter of refraining from unethical behavior"?

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: if "notably ethical action", then media should publicize.
Evidence: 1: people should use businesses that "meet high ethical standards"
2: media should assist in that
3: hearing about "ethical conduct" --> people patronize

Answer Anticipation:
We could be more aggressive about separating the premises into unsupported premises and intermediate conclusions, but for a first pass, this should be sufficient. If we need to be more specific about that logic, we can dig deeper after running some eliminations.
There's some terminology fuzziness around ethics here - the author's playing a little loose with the language matchups. We should be concerned about whether "meet high ethical standards," "notably ethical action[s]," and "ethical conduct" are all the same. The last a general terms that seems to catch everything, while the other two phrases are more specific - and they don't necessarily mean the same thing, or apply to the same businesses. Someone might meet high standards without performing any particularly notable single action, and one could perform one awesome action without meeting high standards as a general matter. Classic term shift, hidden by complex ideas and mushy language.

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) This answer would be capitalizing on a term shift between having high standards and actually meeting those standards - but simply having high standards was never raised in the stimulus. Out of scope!

(B) It's okay if this one didn't immediately jump out as addressing the term shift noted above. The way to save ourselves is to make sure this survives our first pass, then circle back to read it more deeply. This answer defines "meeting high ethical standards" as "refraining from unethical behavior". Why does that matter? Because it means "meeting high ethical standards" is unlikely to produce "notably ethical action[s]" - and the further apart we drive those concepts, the more problematic the term shift between them is in the argument! News media would be publicizing the businesses that did the flashy single actions, and those businesses may not actually be the ones out there meeting the high ethical standards (that we think people should patronize!).

(C) Setting one's own ethical standards sounds on point, but it's actually out of scope - the argument only addresses meeting high ethical standards, not just meeting your own standards.

(D) Everything in the argument stays in the lane of what news media should do and why, while this answer focuses on what they are currently likely to do - out of scope!

(E) This one is tempting if you're trying to look into the true heart of the business to see if they are doing the ethical things for the right reasons (i.e., would do them even if unprofitable). But this question of 'what's in their hearts' is irrelevant to the argument. The argument has already accepted that people should patronize a business that meets high ethical standards. That's a premise! And since it's stated as a blanket rule, it means the argument accepts that people should patronize those businesses regardless of the motivations of the business, or their 'true heart'. Motivations of the business are out of scope!

Takeaway/Pattern:
Term shift is a classic reasoning error, and it can come in all flavors from easy to very hard. Term shifts from "potatoes" to "dancing" are far easier to spot, and are likely to feature on earlier questions. Later term shifts are likely to dig into complex ideas, making them harder to spot. Remember, it's not the change in language alone that makes it a term shift - it has to also be a shift in ideas - but a language change can alert us to investigate the ideas!

#officialexplanation

[JasonH302]

I feel like answer choice (B) isn't so good. It defines "meet high ethical standard" as "refrain from unethical behavior," but the problem is the latter seems to be a bottom line of "notably ethical action," which appears in the conclusion. So if, as the premise indicates, we should patronize businesses that do something so basic (refrain from unethical behavior), why shouldn't we patronize businesses whose behavior is much more morally superior?

[ericc782]

I feel like answer choice (B) isn't so good. It defines "meet high ethical standard" as "refrain from unethical behavior," but the problem is the latter seems to be a bottom line of "notably ethical action," which appears in the conclusion. So if, as the premise indicates, we should patronize businesses that do something so basic (refrain from unethical behavior), why shouldn't we patronize businesses whose behavior is much more morally superior?

I don't think you're framing the conclusion correctly to attack it. The conclusion is not regarding whether or why we should patronize a business or not, it is instead claiming that, "when a business performs a notably ethical action, the news media should publicize that fact," which is supported by the premise that "people should patronize businesses that meet high ethnical standards.." The conclusion here doesn't quite follow from the premise, as a single "notably ethical action" is not really the same thing as "meeting high ethical standards." B in essence further exposes this gap by making it so that "high ethical standards," which again is the crucial baseline the author is using to conclude that a particular business should be publicized by the media, is mainly concerned w/ an avoidance of behavior, rather than a production of a behavior (as is mentioned in the conclusion). W/ this new quality of "high ethical standards" determined by answer choice B, this makes the conclusion even weaker by making the gap b/w "notably ethical action" and "high ethical standards" even greater.
As such, w/in the contexts of the argument, there is essentially no reason why a business that performs a notably ethical action should be publicized by news media (i.e. conclusion is rendered to be practically unsupported).