Q12 - After several attempts to distract

[matthew.mainen]

I initially disqualified B because of the use of the term "necessary." I don't see an evidence in the stimulus that the use of physical discipline was necessary, but only sufficient to achieve the desired result for Carla.

At best, B justifies the judgement about George, but leaves the judgement about Carla open.

I know this is being nit-picky, but I'm wondering how atypical this apparent issue of language occurs on the LSAT?

[demetri.blaisdell]

Thanks for posting, mathew.mainen. What a quirky question! I think you're on to something.

George reluctantly used force to discipline the parrot to keep it from biting furniture (which won't hurt the bird).

Carla used force (which she doesn't normally approve of doing) to keep the dog from running in to the street (end result would be a squashed puppy).

Conclusion: George shouldn't have hit the bird but Carla should have hit the dog.

(B) says that it's OK to use physical discipline if it's necessary to keep the animal from doing something that will hurt it. You are right that neither example explicitly claims that the violence was necessary to discipline the animal (i.e. the only way to get the animal to stop the behavior). The closest they come is telling us that neither of them wanted to use violence. That's close to necessary but not quite there. However, while I agree that (B) is worded in an unfortunate way, if all the other answer choices are wrong it must be right.

Wrong answers:

(A) is out of scope. Neither used a newspaper.

(C) also does nothing for the argument. George made "several attempts" but we don't know if Carla tried anything else. Neither exhausted all alternative remedies as far as we know.

(D) won't get us there: both animals are young.

(E) sounds like the opposite. Carla's puppy only did it once while George's parrot repeated the behavior.

I hope this helps. Thank you for showing me this poorly-worded answer choice. To answer your question about how often this comes up, I can say that it is extremely rare that I find an answer choice that is wrong. You can almost always count on LSAC to get it right. In the once-in-a-blue-moon where they get it wrong, working from wrong to right should save you from getting it wrong. Let me know if you have any questions.

Demetri

[WaltGrace1983]

I thought this was also a bad answer choice. I will go through my thinking now.

Here is the first argument:
"Since chewing on the furniture would not have hurt the bird, George should not have hit it."

~Hurt animal → ~Physical Discipline

Here is the second argument:
"Now the puppy enters the street only when accompanied by Carla, so Carla was justified in disciplining the puppy."

(Enters Street → Accompanied by Carla) → Physical Discipline

In other words, you have something like this...

~Hurt the animal → Physical Discipline
~Physical Discipline → Hurt the Animal ("if she didn't discipline the dog, the dog would have been hurt!")

So there is clearly something wrong going on here. The sufficient conditions match up while the necessary conditions do not.

Then you get (B) which states:

Physical Discipline → Harm
~Harm → ~Physical Discipline

This matches perfectly with George's situation but does nothing for Carla's. However, based on the analysis above, this is the most correct answer. It sucks because I am all about viewing LR as being 4 totally incorrect choices and 1 totally correct choice but this one just doesn't cut it. Does anyone know if LSAC realized their mistake and took this question out?

[tommywallach]

Hey Walt,

Remember, once an LSAT has happened, it's not happening again, so LSAC can't "take something out". But it is a silly question!

-t

[beatthelsat]

I don't see how B could result in serious harm to the animal (as the answer choice says) when the stimulus says that "chewing on the furniture would not have hurt the bird".

Can anyone help clear this up?

Thanks!

[WaltGrace1983]

I don't see how B could result in serious harm to the animal (as the answer choice says) when the stimulus says that "chewing on the furniture would not have hurt the bird".

Can anyone help clear this up?

Thanks!

I think you are getting at the whole point.

For George, the parrot chewing furniture wouldn't end up hurting the parrot.

~(Serious harm to the animal)

For Carla, we would presume that the puppy running in a busy street would end up hurting the puppy.

(Serious harm to the animal)

(B) says: ~Serious harm to the animal --> ~Physical Discipline

This would satisfy the George conclusion in showing that because there was no serious harm, there should have been no physical discipline.

However, this doesn't necessarily satisfy the Carla conclusion because we would need to know that (serious harm to the animal) also leads to (physical discipline)

(B) is definitely the best answer we got but it really should have been worded, "When training an animal, physical discipline should be used when and only when such discipline...

[hstler1]

Interestingly enough, I don't find this question that bad. In fact, it's kind of fun! I'll tell you guys how I arrived at the correct answer.

I saw a few things: First, the commonality between both events (the fact that both used physical force to change the behavior of their pet). Furthermore, the first stimulus gives us a scenario where the physical force wasn't necessary to change the behavior that would not harm but the second was, as some of the posters noted. However, I believe the wording of the answer choice allows for this to be a good answer choice. The statement "...necessary to correct behavior that COULD result in serious harm" means it isn't always the case that the discipline will be to stop an act that may potentially harm the animal. Both instances used forced, and both resulted in change of behavior one however prevented further harm and the other did not which is why I believe "could" plays to make concession between the action that did and did not happen.