Q13 - Because some student demonstrations protesting

[mcrittell]

Kaplan recommends looking at the conclusion, and noting that it ultimately affects "everyone," which C does. Granted, one would have to read the answer to see if it matched up, but is this an approved way of solving this problem (quickly)?

[aileenann]

I would say this strategy you describe is a good and fast guess, but it's not guaranteed to get you to the right answer. If you want the pattern of reasoning to match, you want the whole argument to match as well as possible, not just the conclusion. That means that the LSAT could easily trick you by writing two conclusions that match well with the original but where one did not match the overall pattern of reasoning very quickly. I'd keep this strategy in my back pocket for times when I am short on time and don't want to get sucked into a really time-consuming question, but if you are hoping for a 170+ score, you want to take the time to do this properly.

A more reliable (but honestly more time-consuming) process here is to first boil down the logic of the original argument as abstractly as you can. In this case, we could strip the argument of its content to find that it looks something like this:

X has prevented Y because expectation of this event have resulted in bad outcome Z.

Yet to prevent Y threatens the good G for everyone.

Hence X's decision to prevent Y threaten's everyone's G.

Now we'll need to do the same for each answer choice. But you can sometimes save time because as soon as you see that an answer choice doesn't map onto the original argument, you can drop it. Let's take a look at our options:

(A) X prevented Y by doing Z. But Z RARELY involves any bad outcome Z.

We can stop because of the word rarely. This is the wrong degree and doesn't reflect the degree of certainty of the original argument.

(B) A society that rewards X encourages Y rather than Z.

We can stop here because this is using comparison and contrast, which again isn't what we're looking for.

(C) X did Y to prevent Z. Such Y produces good for everyone. Hence X's actions produced good for everyone.

Looks good -we'll keep it.

(D) X are often expected.

We can stop here - the often is again of a degree different from our original argument.

(E) Acts of X are usually above...

Again, this is the wrong degree so we can stop here.

So this is how I'd recommend doing these in general. Strip each argument down to its bare bones and see which one matches your example argument completely, the way (C) does.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your studying.

[mcrittell]

No matter what, I'd still read the stim. I guess, what I'm trying to say is, do you think I should use Kaplan's method to find a good starting spot, as conclusions should match up regardless (and if not, the support evidence, but conclusion first to narrow down)?

I mean, I'd have to go through the answers choices anyhow, might as well start somewhere, rt?

[noah]

I'm a fan of this approach.

What I do is first look for conclusion mis-matches, see what I can eliminate. Then I look for premise mis-matches in whatever is left, and then I check on the structure.

Some questions fall apart simply by looking for mis-matched conclusion. But, as Aileen mentioned, you want other tools in your back pocket, and you don't want to choose the first answer choice that has a conclusion match.

Go for it!