Logical Reasoning

PT153 · S3 · Q7 Advertisement: Honey Oat Puffs cereal

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Advertisement: Honey Oat Puffs cereal is made with whole-grain oats.

Evidence

Honey Oat Puffs cereal is made with whole-grain oats.

Health experts agree that whole-grain oats are far more healthful than most of the foods in a typical diet.

Conclusion (so)

Most people would have more healthful diets if they ate Honey Oat Puffs for breakfast.

Evaluate

This is one of those arguments that seems rather simple—so simple that the flaw can be easy to miss.

What if the LSAT only gave us the second premise and the conclusion:

Health experts agree that whole-grain oats are far more healthful than most foods in a typical diet.

Therefore, most people would have more healthful diets if they ate Honey Oat Puffs for breakfast.

There are a couple of potential problems with the argument, but ideally we would look at this and say,

Granted, the actual argument does state that Honey Oat Puffs are made with whole-grain oats. But this still only tells us that one ingredient in the cereal is healthful. It doesn't automatically mean that Honey Oat Puffs are healthful. What if they're loaded with sugar? What if they contain other ingredients that are known to be bad for our health?

The argument assumes that a characteristic of one ingredient applies to the cereal as a whole. That's one of the famous flaws, a Part vs. Whole flaw.

Goal

Look for an answer that describes a Part vs. Whole flaw. There are some other gaps in the argument, too, so we need to keep an open mind. We should give any answer that seems relevant a close look. Beware of answers that describe something which doesn't happen at all in the argument.

And we don't care if LSAC really knows what Honey Oat Puffs tasted like. They probably tasted like Tasty Wheat.

7.

The reasoning in the advertisement's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

  1. Correct

    infers that a food will

    Why this is right

    The argument infers that Honey Oat Puffs will have a certain property (being healthful) because one ingredient (whole-grain oats) is healthful.

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

    85% picked this

  2. treats a property that is

    Necessary vs. Sufficient

    This describes a conditional logic flaw that does not appear in this argument. The evidence doesn't explicitly describe any property that is sufficient to make a food healthful. And the argument doesn't conclude that any "property" is necessary for a food to be healthful. The argument does assume that one healthful ingredient is sufficient to make the entire cereal healthful, but that's not what this answer is describing.

    8% picked this

  3. confuses two distinct meanings of

    Equivocation

    There's no indication that the word "healthful" is intended to mean two different things. The word is used the same way throughout the argument.

    1% picked this

  4. concludes that a food contributes

    Out of Scope: tends to be

    Neither the evidence nor the conclusion describes anything that already "tends to be" part of the diets of healthy people. This answer would be more correct if it stated that the argument "concludes that a food would make people's diets more healthful simply because one ingredient contributes to health."

    3% picked this

  5. contains a premise that presupposes

    Circular Reasoning

    Neither of the premises state or presuppose that most people would have more healthful diets if they ate Honey Oat Puffs for breakfast.

    2% picked this

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