Logical Reasoning

PT126 · S1 · Q17 It is a mistake to conclude

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It is a mistake to conclude, as some have, that ancient people did not know what moral rights were simply because no known ancient language has an expression correctly translatable as "a moral right:" This would be like saying that a person who discovers a wild fruit tree and returns repeatedly to harvest from it and study it has no idea what the fruit is until naming it or learning its name.

Conclusion

Just because ancient languages didn’t have any expression for “moral right” doesn’t mean those ancient people didn’t know what moral rights were.

Evidence

That’d be like saying someone who keeps going back to harvest fruit from an apple tree but doesn’t have an expression for it doesn’t know what it is.

Evaluation

When LSAT unfurls an analogy, we often have to match up piece for piece. We have two different situations here (ancient people not having a word for moral rights / person not having a word for a fruit tree) that are being connected to a similar question: does the ancient person know what moral rights are? Does the fruitpicker know what the fruit tree is?

Goal

It’s hard for a lot of us to hear the missing idea here, so we’d probably just look for something that reinforces the idea that, .

17.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?

  1. To know the name of

    Too Strong (conditional) / Opposite

    The author is actually trying to separate these two concepts. The author is driving home the point that we might know something even though we don’t know the name for it. He could similarly believe that someone might know the name for something without really knowing it.

    4% picked this

  2. People who first discover what

    Irrelevant Comparison

    The author is only speaking in absolute language, about whether or not someone knows a thing / knows a name. There is no relative language that tip us off that in one situation you know better than in another situation.

    2% picked this

  3. The name or expression that

    Too Strong: “can’t provide any”

    The author isn’t saying that names are worthless when it comes to knowing things. She’s only saying that names aren’t necessary in order to know a thing.

    8% picked this

  4. Correct

    A person who repeatedly harvests

    Why this is right

    This completes the analogy. In each case, a person doesn’t have a word for something, but in each case the author believes that the person does still know what something is.

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

    72% picked this

  5. One need not know what

    Reversal

    Close, but the author is assuming “One need not have a name for something before one can know what something is”. The author could believe that knowing comes first, naming comes second. In that case, one does need to know what something is before one can name it.

    14% picked this

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