Philosopher: Scientists talk about the

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

TopicsFlaw

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Stimulus

Philosopher: Scientists talk about the pursuit of truth, but, like most people, they are self-interested. Accordingly, the professional activities of most scientists are directed toward personal career enhancement, and only incidentally toward the pursuit of truth. Hence, the activities of the scientific community are largely directed toward whole, and only incidentally toward the pursuit of truth.

What this question is testing

Flaw

Conclusion

The author wants you to believe: the scientific community, taken as a whole, is mainly chasing community status, not truth.

Evidence

Individual scientists are mostly self-interested — they're chasing their own careers, not truth.

Evaluate

Watch the slip. The premise is about individuals: each scientist is chasing personal benefit. The conclusion is about the group: the community is chasing collective status. Those aren't the same thing.

It's like saying, Even if every individual is selfish, the group's output (a coordinated symphony) might serve a totally different goal. What's true of the parts isn't automatically true of the whole.

(Also, the premise was about personal career enhancement, while the conclusion is about community status — those aren't even the same target.)

Goal

The right answer says: the argument moves illegitimately from a premise about individuals to a conclusion about the whole community.

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

The question

18.

The reasoning in the philosopher’s argument is flawed because

Answer choices

Bad Description9% picked this
improperly infers that each and every scientist has a certain characteristic from the premise that most
This describes a "most-to-all" generalization — concluding something about each and every scientist from a premise about most. The argument doesn't do that. The conclusion is about the scientific community as a whole, not about every individual scientist. The error is part-to-whole, not most-to-all.
9%
Correct76% picked this
improperly draws an inference about the scientific community as a whole from a premise
Why this is right
This nails the move. The premise is about individual scientists (their personal career enhancement). The conclusion is about the scientific community as a whole (its status as a whole). The argument treats those as if they were equivalent — but a property of each part isn't automatically a property of the whole, especially when the goal at the individual level (personal career) is different from the goal at the group level (community status).
Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
76%
Bad Assumption11% picked this
presumes, without giving justification, that the aim of personal career enhancement never advances the
The argument says career enhancement and truth-seeking are not the same focus for most scientists — but it doesn't claim career enhancement never advances truth. The stimulus actually allows that truth-seeking happens "incidentally," meaning it can happen as a byproduct. So the argument doesn't rely on this strong assumption. It relies on a different (faulty) move — the part-to-whole leap.
11%
Equivocation2% picked this
illicitly takes advantage of an ambiguity in the meaning
"Self-interested" is used consistently — pursuing personal benefit. The argument doesn't shift the meaning of that term between premises and conclusion. The mistake isn't playing word games; it's the part-to-whole inference.
2%
Causal Flaw2% picked this
improperly draws an inference about a cause from premises about
The argument isn't reasoning about causes and effects at all — it's reasoning about goals or aims, and moving from claims about individuals to claims about a community. There's no observation about an effect being used to infer a cause. This describes a different kind of flaw the argument doesn't commit.
2%

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