Logical Reasoning

PT117 · S3 · Q21 A smoker trying to quit

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A smoker trying to quit is more likely to succeed if his or her doctor greatly exaggerates the dangers of smoking.

Conclusion

Individuals cannot easily adopt a strategy in which the danger of some habit they want to break is greatly exaggerated, unless a doctor or some other third party provides the warning.

Evidence (since)

These strategies involve deception.

Evaluate

Since the conclusion is Conditional, two things are true:

1. If we want to make any objections to this argument, they have to be to the outcome of the conditional, not to the the trigger. (We can essentially treat the trigger of a conditional conclusion as though it's another premise. It's baked-in to the reasoning as something we need to accept.)

2. The author is probably making a conditional assumption.

The author's move from premise to conclusion is essentially, .

So the Linking assumption the author is making is,

.

In terms of Objections, we would try to think of a way to argue that one could easily adopt this strategy without some third party providing the warning.

Let's say we want to quit drinking alcohol. We want to the danger of continuing to drink alcohol greatly exaggerated, so that it will motivate us to kick the habit. Can we carry out this plan without a third party providing the warning? (our friends / family / a doctor / the internet ... all of those are third parties)

Sure, couldn't we just warn ourselves? We could be brushing our teeth in the mirror and say,

Goal

Look for an answer proving the missing link of, , or look for a Defender answer ruling out our objection, saying something like,

21.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

  1. People tend to believe whatever

    Too Strong: tend to / whatever

    The argument is definitely insinuating that a person would find a greatly exaggerated warning of danger more compelling coming from a doctor than from themselves. But that's all the author has said on this matter. She hasn't committed herself to the idea that most people ("tend to" = most) believe whatever doctors tell them.

    14% picked this

  2. Most of the techniques that

    Too Strong: most

    The argument is saying that this one technique (of greatly exaggerating danger) is a technique that helps to quit smoking as well as to break other habits. Technically, she doesn't say the same technique works for both, but similar strategies work for other habits. But that's just one technique that crosses over from smoking to other habits. The author hasn't come close to committing herself to the idea that more than 50% of techniques that work for smoking also work for other habits. (The word 'most' is wrong on Necessary Assumption and in Reading Comp, the vast majority of the time we see it.)

    3% picked this

  3. The more the relevant danger

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: the more X, the more Y This is a Volume Dial statement (the more X, the more Y), which is the strongest type of claim on LSAT, because it means that two things have a relationship that extends infinitely in both directions. The author thinks that if the danger of a habit is exaggerated by a third party, it could help someone break their habit. But the author doesn't commit to a precise mathematical idea that if you exaggerate the danger by 15% more, then you increase the likelihood of the habit breaking by 15%. This answer has nothing to do with the conclusion, either. The author isn't arguing that people will be likely to break a habit. We should be hearing about whether or not it's possible to carry off a strategy that involves deception without a third party.

    7% picked this

  4. Correct

    People generally do not find

    Why this is right

    We're always very receptive to answers with Ruling Out language (not/no) on Necessary Assumption, since so many correct answers are written in that style. These are the answers we especially should consider negating, to see whether they turn into objections. Would it hurt the argument if we said, "Yo, author -- people generally do find it easy to deceive themselves"? Yes! This author is saying, "Since these strategies involve deception, it will be hard to adopt them unless you have someone else to provide you with the warning." But we can clap back and say, "Why do you need someone else? People usually find it easy to deceive themselves".

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

    71% picked this

  5. A doctor is justified in

    Too Strong: whenever

    This argument only dealt with one instance in which a doctor would potentially be justified in deceiving a patient. The author didn't sign off on all such cases and say that whenever a deception would make the patient healthier, it's fine for a doctor to deceive the patient. The concept of "justified in deceiving a patient" is totally out of scope.

    6% picked this

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