Logical Reasoning

PT155 · S4 · Q20 Political scientist: Democracy depends

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Political scientist: Democracy depends on free choices, and choices cannot be free unless they are made on the basis of well-reasoned opinions.

Conclusion

In the Information Age, a highly literate society will be a democratic one.

Evidence

Democracy depends on free choices. Free choices require well-reasoned opinions. In the Information Age, well-reasoned opinions require reading skills.

Evaluate

Whenever we're doing Flaw, if we see any conditional logic, we need to ascertain whether the author is making an illegal Backwards or Opposite move.

We have three conditional trigger words in the first three claims: X depends on Y can't have X unless you have Y X is essential to Y

The easiest way to diagram Requirements is to remember that "the Required thing goes on the Right". We can literally read a conditional statement like X → Y as if a literate society, then a democratic one", in other words

reading skills → democracy

We can see this is an illegal Backwards move.

Goal

We can look for an answer choice describing the famous Necessary vs. Sufficient flaw, or we can look for an answer choice saying,

20.

The political scientist's reasoning is flawed in that it

  1. Correct

    mistakes necessary conditions for sufficient

    Why this is right

    Whenever we're doing Flaw and we come across a Necessary vs. Sufficient answer, we can just ask ourselves, did this argument have any conditional logic? If the answer is "no", eliminate that answer choice. If the answer is "yes", then this answer choice will almost always be correct. The author presented a conditional chain of ideas, showing that "Democracy requires reading skills" Then he concluded that "any literate society will be democratic", which is a reversal of that idea. This answer choice is the first time I've ever seen LSAT pluralize Necessary vs. Sufficient conditions. And that's because the author read a whole chain backwards, so he made three illegal backwards moves in going from literacy (i.e. reading skills) to democracy.

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

    77% picked this

  2. fails to take into account

    Not a Reasoning Flaw

    Would it weaken the argument to say, "Hey, author, there are lots of ways to form well-reasoned opinions"? The only thing the author said about well-reasoned opinions is that they're necessary for making free choices, and they require reading skills. Is this answer saying, "They don't require reading skills?" If it were, it would just be trying to contradict a premise. That wouldn't point out a flaw in reasoning; it would only point out an untrue claim. That's never the name of the game in Flaw. If saying "there are many means of forming well-reasoned opinions" just means that "yes, you need reading skills, but from there, lots of different types of reading could lead you to well-reasoned opinions", then it wouldn't be disagreeing with any part of the author's argument.

    5% picked this

  3. confuses the means of doing

    Trap

    Unrelated to Goal Out of Scope: reasons for doing This doesn't have anything to do with the author's giant error of interpreting conditional logic backwards (i.e. of thinking of necessary things as though they are sufficient), or of failing to consider how an undemocratic society could also have all the necessary requirements for being a highly literate society. We do talk about the "means" of making free choices (well-reasoned opinions) and the means of having well-reasoned opinions (reading skills), but we're never talking about the reasons why you would make a free choice, or the reasons why you have well-reasoned opinions.

    1% picked this

  4. generalizes too hastily from one

    Wrong Flaw

    This language is a reference to the famous Sampling flaw, where an author assumes that because something was true in this case, or for these data points, that same thing will be true for this other (larger) group of data points. This author doesn't generalize from one type of case. The author lays out a bunch of interconnected necessary conditions and then concludes a (faulty) link between the beginning and end of that chain of necessity.

    2% picked this

  5. takes for granted that a

    Not a Flaw

    It is completely valid to say that a condition under which something occurs is a condition under which all its prerequisites occur. If something like X has prerequisites Y and Z, that means that if X is true, then Y and Z are true So if there's a condition under which X occurs, then that would absolute be a condition under which Y and Z occur too.

    14% picked this

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