Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT130 S4 Q12 Explanation

Sahira: To make a living

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

TopicsMethod

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Stimulus

Sahira: To make a living from their art, artists of great potential would have to produce work that would gain widespread popular acclaim, instead of their best are justified in subsidizing artists.

Rahima: Your argument for subsidizing art depends on claiming that to gain widespread popular acclaim, artists must produce something other than their need not be true.

What this question is testing

Method

Sahira's Argument

Sahira says: without subsidies, talented artists would have to make popular work instead of their best work — so we should subsidize them.

Rahima's Move

Rahima isn't arguing about subsidies directly. She's pointing at a hidden premise of Sahira's argument: that an artist's "best work" and "widely popular work" must be different things.

Think of it like this. Sahira is saying, Rahima responds,

That's an attack on an unstated assumption — not the conclusion directly, but the hidden premise the argument depends on.

Goal

An answer that describes Rahima's move as challenging an implicit assumption.

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

The question
12.

In her argument,

Answer choices

  1. Correct82% picked this

    disputes an implicit assumption of

    Why this is right

    This describes Rahima's technique exactly. Sahira's argument implicitly assumes artists must produce something other than their best work to gain popular acclaim — i.e., that "best work" and "popular work" are different things. Rahima identifies that hidden premise and disputes it ("but this need not be true").

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

  2. Bad Description0% picked this

    presents independent support for Sahira's

    Rahima is the opposite of supporting Sahira. She's pushing back on Sahira's argument by attacking a hidden assumption it relies on. She doesn't add independent support; she undermines.

  3. Bad Description3% picked this

    accepts Sahira's conclusion, but for reasons different from those given

    Rahima never accepts Sahira's conclusion. She doesn't say "subsidies are justified for a different reason." She challenges Sahira's argument itself by attacking an assumption it relies on.

  4. Bad Description11% picked this

    uses Sahira's premises to reach a conclusion different from that reached

    Rahima doesn't use Sahira's premises to reach a different conclusion. She rejects one of Sahira's implicit premises (that best work can't coincide with popular acclaim). She doesn't take the premises as given and run them in a different direction.

  5. Bad Description3% picked this

    argues that a standard that she claims Sahira uses

    "Self-contradictory" is much too strong. Rahima doesn't argue Sahira's standard contradicts itself — she just says the assumption Sahira makes "need not be true." That's a milder objection than self-contradiction.

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