Q18 - Many parents rigorously organize

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice guessing!

Perhaps your "spidey-sense" is attuned to the pattern that answers that weaken or point out the flaw often just say, "just because the premise is true, that doesn't mean I have to believe the conclusion".

Or put another way: the premise is compatible with the OPPOSITE of the conclusion.

Let's break the argument down.

First we need to recognize that the second sentence in the conclusion. The easiest way to do that is to recognize the pattern of arguments that go like this:

Many people believe ..... <----- opposing point
BUT/YET/HOWEVER [I disagree] <--- conclusion
After all, ...... <----- supporting evidence

So the conclusion here is "This belief is incorrect". It's VERY important that we import the borrowed language from the opposing point so we know exactly what we're concluding.

Opposing point: Rigorously organizing your kids' playtime enhances their cognitive development.

[This belief is incorrect, so I'm really saying ....]

Conc: Rigorously organizing your kids' playtime DOES NOT enhance their cognitive development.

Why?

Prem: Rigorously organizing your kids' playtime will not lead to a creative and resourceful child.

***note: this is a paraphrase of the premise, which I'll address at the end***

The flaw here appears to just be a language shift between whether structured playtime will lead to cognitive development and whether it will lead to a creative and resourceful child.

Should we accept that "increased cognitive development" is equivalent to "creative and resourceful child"? I don't think so. They are different ideas.

(note: I do think we can accept that "rigorously organized playtime" and "thoroughly structured playtime" mean the same thing)

Choice (E) addresses the gap we have between the term in the premise and the term in the conclusion. It attacks the assumption and says that the two terms this argument is trying to equate do not have to go hand-in-hand.

A) the author IS trying to conclude that something (structured playtime) is NOT conducive to some goal (cognitive development). However, his premise doesn't say that something (structured playtime) IS conducive to anything. So the first half of this answer choice doesn't match up with the premise.

B) children's enjoyment is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not they're cognitively developing

C) Nec/Suff errors mean that the author gave you a piece of conditional logic in the premise and then interpreted it incorrectly in the conclusion. Does this argument have a conditional statement in the premise? No. Get rid of it.

D) This answer pointlessly blends the ideas contained in the premise (which was an analogy between playtime and novel-writing). There's no logic to unravel within the premise, as this answer is trying to do. We're trying to unravel the logic that goes from premise to conclusion.

***So, about that premise. There is another big assumption in this argument that the answers didn't address, but it may have distracted some students or added to their confusion.

Picture this simple argument:
Some people think that a Frappuccino is beautiful. But they're wrong. After all, saying a Frappuccino is beautiful is like saying that a Ford Explorer is beautiful.

What is this author concluding?
Frapps are not beautiful.

What is this author assuming?
Ford Explorers are not beautiful

When authors argue by use of analogy, they don't always explicitly connect the analogy to what they're trying to prove. They leave it implied.

For a great example of this in the same test, go to Test 55, Sect 1, #17.

So in our current argument, the author is saying "thinking that structured playtime gives you a creative, resourceful child is like thinking that you'll get a good novel from someone who's told what the plot and characters should be."

Assumption?
You would NOT get a good novel from someone who's told what the plot and characters should be.

Hence, you will NOT get a creative, resourceful child by means of structured playtime.

Technically, the answers could have addressed this assumption as well. If we saw hypothetical answer (F) that said:

F) takes for granted that telling a writer what a novel's plot and characters must be does not facilitate getting a good novel as a result

That would be correct as well.

Let me know if you have any lingering questions.


#officialexplanation

[LSAT-Chang]

Could someone go over this for me? I guessed (E) correctly but I can't seem to figure out what the flaw is in the argument and how (E) addresses the flaw.

[LSAT-Chang]

Thank you for the awesome detailed explanation!! I knew there was something wrong about the analogy, but I didn't bother because the conclusion just grabbed my attention: "the belief is INCORRECT" and I could see that the premise was deifnitely NOT sufficient to prove that strong of a claim. I think if this question was an assumption Q, I would have gotten answer choice (F) correct since I spotted that gap in Q17 of Section 1 in this preptest! Well thank you for the great explanation -- I really really appreciate it!