Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT106 S2 Q4 Explanation

Whittaker: There can be no such

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsMethod

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Stimulus

Whittaker: There can be no such thing as the number of medical school students who drop out before their second year, because if they have a second year.

Hudson: By your reasoning I cannot help but become rich, because there is similarly no such thing as my dying before is in the bank.

What this question is testing

Method

Whittaker's argument

Whittaker says you can't count the number of med students who drop out before their second year, because if they drop out, they never reach a second year — so the phrase "before their second year" doesn't apply.

Hudson's response

Hudson plays back the same trick on something obviously wrong: Hudson clearly can die before his first million. So the reasoning has to be broken — and if it's broken in the parallel case, it was broken in Whittaker's original case too.

Evaluate

This is a classic move: take someone's reasoning, run it on a different topic where the conclusion is clearly false, and use the absurd outcome to discredit the original reasoning.

Goal

Find: shows a relevantly analogous argument leads to an untenable conclusion.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
4.

Hudson responds to Whittaker

Answer choices

  1. Correct92% picked this

    showing that a relevantly analogous argument leads to an

    Why this is right

    This is exactly Hudson's move. He builds an argument with the same form as Whittaker's — about an event that, by Whittaker's logic, can't be counted because it presupposes its own non-occurrence — and shows that this analogous argument leads to an absurd conclusion: that Hudson cannot help but become rich. Since the parallel argument's conclusion is untenable (people can clearly die without becoming millionaires), the form of reasoning behind it must be flawed in Whittaker's original case too.

    Skill tested: Method · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

  2. Bad Description3% picked this

    citing a specific example to counter Whittaker’s

    Hudson does not cite a specific example to counter a general claim. He doesn't, for instance, name a particular dropout to refute Whittaker's claim about counting. Instead, he constructs a parallel argument about a different topic (his own death and millionaire status). That's an analogy, not a counterexample.

  3. Bad Description3% picked this

    pointing out that Whittaker mistakes a necessary situation for a

    Hudson doesn't accuse Whittaker of mistaking a necessary situation for a possible one. He shows the form of Whittaker's reasoning fails by demonstrating it in a parallel case. The error he exposes is structural, not a confusion about modal categories like necessity vs. possibility.

  4. Bad Description1% picked this

    claiming that what Whittaker says cannot be true because Whittaker acts as if

    Hudson doesn't claim Whittaker is acting inconsistently with his own assertions. There's no charge of hypocrisy or behavioral contradiction. The critique is purely about the structure of the reasoning.

  5. Bad Description1% picked this

    showing that Whittaker’s argument relies on analyzing an extreme and

    Hudson doesn't claim Whittaker's case is extreme or unrepresentative. Hudson's objection isn't that the medical-school case is unusual — it's that the form of reasoning behind it produces absurd conclusions when applied to other cases. The critique is about the reasoning, not the example chosen.

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