Q3 - Chairperson: The board of directors

[LSAT-Chang]

I had a quick question about this type of question in general.
I didn't eliminate (A) and (C) until I read (D) and chose (D).

The reason why I didn't eliminate (A) was because principles are meant to be a "general" kind of statement that overarches the whole argument so doesn't have to be too specific in regards to situations. So I thought well, I don't like the word "never" in this choice, however, if we did have this principle, then our conclusion is kind of "included" in this "never" statement. Does this make sense? So since the conclusion is that we shouldn't expand operations without further consideration of the issue, if we had (A)s principle, then it doesn't go against it or anything.

The reason why i didn't eliminate (C) was because if political stability is the MOST important consideration, then it would make sense to conclude that we shouldn't expand operations without further consideration of the issue just from the evidence that "neither of the two countries is politically stable" used to support the conclusion. Does this make sense?

Since this is a principle support question, I thought to myself, "I need to find a principle that will help bridge the argument -- basically like a strengthen question". So I definitely thought (A) and (C) would be a "supporting" principle for the argument, but I chose (D) because the part about "corporations should always be cautious about expanding operations" was more align with the actual conclusion of "we should not expand operations without further consideration of the issue". I would just like some explanation on (A) and (C) since I didn't eliminate it though I do like (D) better.

[timmydoeslsat]

Ah but it is not a principle support question.

This is a conforming question.

Totally different!

[LSAT-Chang]

Ah but it is not a principle support question.

This is a conforming question.

Totally different!

Hmmmm.. I have to disagree with you on this one.
This is actually a principle support question because we are looking for a principle in the five answer choices that could use to justify the chairperson's reasoning. A principle example question would be where there is either a directly stated principle or an implied principle within the argument, and we are to look for an answer choice that uses a similar principle implied in a judgment. These 5 answer choices are all principles, and among these we need to choose the one that best justifies the author's point.

Here we actually have a core with a gap (unlike principle example):

Neither of the two countries is politically stable therefore our corporation should not allow the expansion of our operations into these two countires without further consideration of the issue.

So the author is assuming that a country being politically stable is important in determining whether a corporation should allow the expansion of the operations without further consideration or not.

And answer choice (D) gives us this principle! The word "conforms" in the question stem does not necessarily mean that it will be a principle example question -- that is what I "thought" in the beginning and so during one of my office hours with Mike, he laid out the two different type of principle questions that both use the word "conforms". They are:

principle support: the argument conforms to which one of the following principles? (exactly the one we have in this question)

principle example: which one of the following conforms to the principle stated above?

What do you think? Anyways, I would still like someone to provide me an explanation with regards to (A) and (C)...

[timmydoeslsat]

This is not a principle support. I need to be more clear.

In a true principle support/justify question, an answer like all or none would be a great thing if it allows you to conclude something.

In this stimulus, we have a situation where the chairperson says:

Board should not allow incentives being offered by 2 foreign govts to entice us to expand without further consideration of the issue.

Notice that the chairperson is not deciding either way about what the board should do regarding expanding operations. His principle (assumed) is about considering issues and not simply looking at the incentives by themselves.

A) Does the chairperson agree with never expand? No, he talks about further consideration.

B) Should expand? Same issue. Further consideration is all he wants.

C) Just because it is the most important does not conform to should doing something. It may be the case, in fact, that the incentives is the most important thing and not political instability. It's just that further consideration of the issue needs to happen.

D) Looks good.

E) Always disregard?

[LSAT-Chang]

I'm sorry timmydoeslsat.. I still cannot agree with you that this is not a principle support question. I agree with all your point in regards to the argument, but the correct answer choice (D) is basically an assumption that bridges the gap of the chairperson's argument which is that because neither of these countries is politically stable, the board should not allow the incentives being offered by two foregin governments to entice us to expand our operations into their countries without further consideration of the issue. There seems to be something wrong with this argument since the evidence that is used to support the conclusion is solely about these countries not being "politically stable". And (D) bridges this gap by giving us the principle, right?

Just for further clarification, I will attach the screen shot that Mike (one of the creators of the strategy guides) sent me after our office hour. I also just e-mailed Mike and asked him if he could chime in on our discussion.

2011-08-15 오후 6.56.07.png

(130.62 KiB) Downloaded 400 times

[timmydoeslsat]

My fear of strictly viewing this as a principle support question is that a test taker may do this:

"Oh, the conclusion is should not allow the incentives being offered to entice us without further consideration of the issue."

And then the student goes to the answer choices saying I have to support this.

Hypothetical answer choice:

A corporation should never make a decision until all relevant matters to the decision have been thought about.

I would argue that this would justify the chairperson's argument, but it does not conform to his reasoning. His reasoning includes the political instability.

I would like to have input from Mike or others on this.

[LSAT-Chang]

My fear of strictly viewing this as a principle support question is that a test taker may do this:

"Oh, the conclusion is should not allow the incentives being offered to entice us without further consideration of the issue."

And then the student goes to the answer choices saying I have to support this.

You are right! I did define that as a conclusion, but I didn't look for a support in the answer choice, but rather a principle that will bridge the gap between that conclusion given and the evidence used for it which is because they are politically instable. I was looking for an answer choice that links the premise to the conclusion and (D) did that perfectly for me.. But it may all come down to me not being flexible again. But then it wouldn't make sense to not strictly follow these since these are what is being taught on strategy guides and if we are to decide what type of question its asking us based on the stimulus, then I see no point reading the question stem to help us determine what type of question it is... but I have to admit that I really need to learn how to be flexible. I think I had that slide stuck on my head so whenever I see the word "principle" on the question stem, the first thing I do is ask myself whether it is a support/example, and with this case, it was a support just based on the question stem and that is why I approached it by IDing the core and identifying gap, etc.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

I think you are both correct, but thinking about this from different perspectives.

I hope that doesn't sound like a cop out answer! I'm going to explain what I mean here:

To conform to something and to support something are not the same thing. Timmydoeslsat is absolutely right in this regard, and I can definitely imagine problems for which support answers don't work quite well as conform answers, and vice versa. I will also say that in my experience this is not commonly, or even uncommonly, true of how actual recent LSAT questions have been written.

The context of the office hours was as follows --
1) I wanted to make it clear that the word "conform" doesn't in-and-of-itself guarantee that you should think about the problem as one type or another. You may need to find an argument that a principle conforms to, or vice versa.
2) For all of these principle questions, a primary distinction is whether you are using the stimulus to consider five unique arguments in the answer choices, or vice versa (or a combination -- i.e. you have to extract a principle and apply it to five arguments in answers).

So, when a question, like this one, asks which principle the argument conforms to, we know that we're considering how the answer choices match with the given argument, and not vice-versa.

Therefore, to clarify, what I mean is not that conform and support questions are the same, but rather that there is commonality in how you want to think about them.

We can make an analogy to Must be True vs Most Supported Q's -- are they the same thing? No. However, I would argue that focusing on the differences between them is likely an inefficient way to use your study time -- for either of two types of questions, you'll end up with 1 answer that is almost entirely or entirely provable, and 4 that clearly are not. Your practice and study should be focused on that particular distinction, and because of that we suggest in our strategy guides and whatnot that you think of Must be True and Most Supported in the same fashion.

All teachers constantly have to debate what distinctions to prioritize, and what commonalities to prioritize. Though support and conform are not exactly the same, there is a huge amount of commonality to them. For both, the key to success is to generalize slightly off of a very specific understanding of the core. That turns out to be the key to success for this problem, and, if your focus on this, it should be clear why (D) is a much stronger answer than (A) or (C), neither of which works well as a clean fit between premise and conclusion.

If I had to read between the lines, I'd say there is a slight communication gap in the following ways:

1) TimmydoesLSAT is concerned that thinking about conform q's as principle support q's could temp one to think of the conform answers simply as "which one strengthens?" That makes a lot of sense because there is a lot of overlap between Strengthen and Principle Support. Furthermore, thinking about (A) and (C) simply in terms of which one strengthens makes them much more tempting than they should be. However, I think the concern could be less relevant for someone, like Changsoyeon, studying manhattanlsat systems, which give specific instructions for principle (support) that are not directly connected to instruction for strengthen (or support).

2) Changsoyeon, thinking about it in mLSAT terms, is thinking that since TimmydoesLSAT is not seeing this as a principle (support) q, TimmydoesLSAT is seeing this as a principle (example) question. However, I'm sure he's not saying that. He's saying it's a separate type of question.

Sorry to play amateur mind-reader -- feel free to let me know if I'm totally off!

In any case, I hope that clarifies the issue. We don't claim give perfect instruction, but in our judgement it makes better sense to focus on the commonality between the two question types rather than the difference, and I have a lot of confidence (backed up with a lot of research) that that's the right call.

Finally (since this is already so long anyway) -- just want to give thanks to both of you for contributing to our forums. TimmydoesLSAT -- seems you've been super-helpful to students so thanks so much. Changsoyeon, I am so impressed with your dedication! -- I'm going to keep trying to do everything I can to help you get that killer score.

[LSAT-Chang]

Finally (since this is already so long anyway) -- just want to give thanks to both of you for contributing to our forums. TimmydoesLSAT -- seems you've been super-helpful to students so thanks so much. Changsoyeon, I am so impressed with your dedication! -- I'm going to keep trying to do everything I can to help you get that killer score.

Thank you SO much chiming in!!! This definitely cleared everything up. I actually ran into a brick wall last night and can't seem to get out of it yet -- but hopefully will be back in shape!

And yes, reading my very first post, I shouldn't have used the word "strengthen" there and I think this is what made timmydoeslsat think that I was viewing it as a "strengthen" question -- I should have used the word "support" instead -- which one of the following principles support the chairperson's argument? And (A) and (C) are not what the chairperson is saying (degree issues with "never" and "most"), so we can't say those answers "support" his argument, whereas (D) does illustrate what the chairperson is suggesting, so therefore, correct! But thanks to both of you for helping me with this one

[timmydoeslsat]

Mike is no amateur mind reader.

He is a professional one.

I agree with every word said.

[WaltGrace1983]

I thought I'd chime in on this one and offer some more analysis. I thought that these answer choices were surprising tough for a third question. This seems like something that would pop up later in the LR section, though albeit I am generalizing a lot by saying this.

Here is the main guts of what is going on:

Neither of these two countries is politically stable
→
We should not allow the incentives to entice us without further consideration.

So what is the LSAT doing here? The LSAT is tricking you into over-inferring. Let's say you are looking at a house. This house is a real piece of work and has almost nothing that you were looking for. You wanted certain features - square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms - and this house just doesn't fit the bill. However, in the backyard is a coy fish pond and you love coy fish and you are debating to buy the house. Your husband/wife says, "don't let the coy fish pond entice you! We must consider all the issues with this house."

What did your husband/wife just say? Is he/she telling you not to buy the house? to buy the house? Actually neither. Though when someone says something like this in real life we often assume that this is a negative response implying "we shouldn't do this."

This is what the LSAT is doing. It is playing on this idea that we have come across so many times. (A) (B) and (E) are wrong because of this. (C) is very similar but is a little bit special.

(C) is special because it is not definitively saying yes/no to the proposition, it is merely saying that the coy fish pond is the "most important" issue. My apprehension however lies in the fact that if that coy fish pond was indeed the most important consideration, couldn't the conclusion be different? Couldn't you conclude that you must buy the house because it has the coy fish pond? Well yes, and this would go against what the stimulus is saying. However, being the "most important" issue doesn't imply that it is the only issue. Couldn't it be true that you sacrifice the most important thing - the coy fish pond - to get everything else? Yes that could be true too!

Either way, I don't think that there is evidence in the stimulus pointing to the idea that political stability actually is the most important issue. This is, above all, why (C) is wrong. All the stimulus is saying is, "hey let's consider the issue [political stability]!."

(D) is right for all the reasons stated by others. It falls perfectly in line with the argument. It is not exactly the perfect principle as "always" is a wee bit strong but it seems to really conform to the ideals of the stimulus.

[seychelles1718]

For me, "we should not allow ~ without further consideration" sounds really strong, as if it is insisting on something very firmly and confidently. That's why I chose A over D because A is much stronger than D.
Can anyone please provide further explanation of A?

Thanks!!!

[ohthatpatrick]

Sure thing. If the 1st sentence just said "we should not allow their incentives to entice us to expand into their country", then that DOES sound strong and definitive.

But that's not what the 1st sentence says.

It says "we shouldn't expand without further consideration of the issue".

That's not definitive about whether or not to expand. It's only definitive about whether or not to expand IMMEDIATELY.

The author's main point in the 1st sentence could be rephrased like this, "We need to further consider expansion before doing so."

That has the same meaning as "we shouldn't expand without further consideration".

(A) doesn't conform to the paragraph. If the chairperson believed (A), then the decision would already be made. These countries are politically unstable, so according to (A), we should NEVER expand operations there.

The chairperson, meanwhile, is NOT already decided. She wants to discuss/research the matter more. That means that she IS still considering expanding there.