Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT18 S4 Q11 Explanation

Civil libertarian: The categorical prohibition

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

TopicsFlaw

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Stimulus

Civil libertarian: The categorical prohibition of any nonviolent means of expression inevitably poisons a society’s intellectual atmosphere. Therefore, those advocating censorship of all potentially offensive art is harmful to society.

Censorship advocate: You’re wrong, because many people are in agreement about what offensive art.

What this question is testing

Flaw

Your task

Describe the reasoning error the argument actually commits.

Common trap

Answers that name a real logical flaw the argument doesn't actually make.

Winning move

Articulate the gap in the reasoning yourself, then match it to the choice that describes that gap.

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

The question
11.

The censorship advocate’s rebuttal is flawed

Answer choices

  1. Wrong Flaw8% picked this

    attempts to extract a general rule from a

    This describes a Sampling Flaw. The evidence is a sample: many people are X. (X: can agree on what is offensive art) In a sampling flaw, the conclusion would assume that X was true for an even bigger group: therefore, most people in the world are X. This is not concluding that a bigger group "can agree on what is offensive art". It's concluding that "censoring all potentially offensive art is not harmful to society".

  2. Out of Scope: principle16% picked this

    extracts an erroneous principle from a commonly

    There isn't any principle in the advocate's argument.

  3. Wrong Flaw1% picked this

    attacks the civil libertarian’s character instead of

    This refers to Ad Hominem, in which an author dismisses someone's view because of the source's ulterior motives or past behavior, neither of which happened here.

  4. Correct75% picked this

    relies on an irrelevant reason for rejecting the civil

    Why this is right

    This just says what we all felt when we read the advocate's response: huh? The fact that the advocate's response feels so weak-sauce or off-base usually doesn't mean we've "found the flaw", does it? Yes, sometimes! There really are Flaw problems like this where you can struggle for a while trying to understand a bad rebuttal, and really all LSAT wants us to say is, "What is this guy, talkin' about!" The fact that many people can agree to the criteria for a certain action doesn't address a person's concern that this action would have bad consequences.

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

  5. Too Strong: hyperbolic, inflammatory1% picked this

    uses hyperbolic, inflammatory language that obscures the issue

    The advocate's two claims are both very moderate and unemotional.

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