Logical Reasoning

PT16 · S2 · Q23 S: People who are old enough

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S: People who are old enough to fight for their country are old enough to vote for the people who make decisions about war and peace.

S's Conclusion (so)

The government should acknowledge the right of 17 year olds to vote.

S's Evidence

The government clearly regards 17 olds as old enough to fight, and people old enough to fight are old enough to vote for the people who make decisions about war and peace.

T's Conclusion (Implicit)

Your conclusion might not be warranted.

T's Evidence

The argument only works if fighting and voting are the same, but clearly fighting requires strength / coordination / reflexes, whereas responsible voting requires deliberation / reasoning / knowledge.

Evaluate

Most of the time that we're asked to describe someone's Method of Response, it falls into one or more of these buckets:

- they point out a dubious assumption - they suggest an alternate explanation - they raise some overlooked consideration - they discuss faulty implications of someone's logic or plan

T's response seems to do #1 and #3. He's saying, and suggesting that this is a dubious assumption by raising the overlooked consideration that fighting requires a completely different set of attributes than does responsibly voting (and the former attributes are presumably more likely possessed by a 17 year old than are the latter attributes).

Goal

Let's look for any answer that matches. We should remind ourselves that T never said S's conclusion is wrong, he just undermines its persuasiveness by saying that S is analogizing two things that are quite distinct.

23.

T responds to S’s argument by

  1. citing evidence overlooked by S

    Contradicted: supported

    T is undermining S's logic, so T's evidence would undermine S's conclusion.

    4% picked this

  2. calling into question S’s understanding

    Bad Description: understanding of rights

    T calls into question the legitimacy of an analogy between fighting and voting that S is making, but he never calls into question her understanding of the concept of rights.

    7% picked this

  3. showing that S has ignored

    Bad Description: rights vs. obligations

    At no point is T is saying, "you're ignoring the distinction between rights and obligations". T is saying, "you're ignoring the distinction between what's needed to fight and what's needed to vote responsibly".

    9% picked this

  4. Correct

    challenging the truth of a

    Why this is right

    S claimed that "people old enough to fight are old enough to vote", and T calls this claim into question by saying, "that's only true if fighting and voting are the same, which they're not". This is a rare case in which the 2nd person is undermining the 1st person by attacking the legitimacy of one of their explicit premises.

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

    61% picked this

  5. arguing for a conclusion opposite

    Too Strong: arguing for opposite conclusion

    This was the trap answer we warned ourselves about. T only suggests that S's argument might not be good because it might rely on a faulty assumption. He never says that 17 year olds shouldn't have the right to vote. He might believe that they should have that right, but for different reasons than that cited by S. T is only saying, "This is an unsuccessful argument", not "your conclusion is false". Saying that "you failed to prove X" is not the same as "X is false". When LSAT authors act like those are the same, we call it the famous Unproven vs. Proven False flaw.

    19% picked this

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