Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT117 S4 Q10 Explanation

Council member P: Alarmists are

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

TopicsAgree/Disagree

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Stimulus

Council member P: Alarmists are those who see an instance of pollution and exaggerate its significance into a major character fault of society. Such alarmists fail to distinguish the incident and the disposition of people not to pollute.

Council member Q: To think that there is a lot of pollution based on the discovery of a serious single instance of pollution is simply an application of the widely accepted principle that actions tend to follow the path easier to pollute than not to pollute.

What this question is testing

Agree/Disagree

Your task

Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.

Common trap

Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.

Winning move

Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence gap.

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

The question
10.

Council members P and Q disagree

Answer choices

  1. Unsupported Both5% picked this

    pollution should be considered a

    We wouldn't be able to infer either person's position on whether or not pollution really is a problem. They would probably agree that pollution, where it exists, should be considered a problem. If this answer is intended to mean, "the contemporary world's pollution situation should be considered a problem", we'd have reason to think P disagrees, but no reason to think that Q agrees. Q is only speaking about human psychology and behavioral heuristics.

  2. Unsupported 1st Speaker6% picked this

    actions tend to follow the path of

    We know Q would agree, but P never speaks on the principle of "path of least resistance".

  3. Probably Agree8% picked this

    people are responsible for

    Neither one of them are talking about actual events or reality. Both are discussing hypothetical moments of human psychology, related to pollution. So neither one of them has causally assessed the role of mankind in pollution. But if we took a common sense swing, they probably agree that people are responsible for pollution. Do we ever use the term pollution when we're not referring to people?

  4. Unsupported: change behavior9% picked this

    people can change their behavior and

    Neither one of them speaks at all to whether people can change. The disagree position would be very dangerously strong: "People can never change their behavior and not pollute". There's no way we could accuse Q of thinking that.

  5. Correct72% picked this

    people are inclined to

    Why this is right

    P disagrees, saying that alarmists fail to realize that even though a specific instance of pollution is terrible, what caused it is specific to that instance. It's not because society has a character fault. People have a disposition not to pollute. They're inclined to avoid polluting; it's their default preference. Q disagrees, saying that people have a disposition to do the easier thing, and polluting is easier than not polluting.

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

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