Q13 - Pedigreed dogs...

[weiyichen1986]

Hi, i am wondering why is D incorrect. I am bugged by the word " attempt to ensure" in answer E...thanks in advance.

[demetri.blaisdell]

Thanks for your question, weiyichen1986.

The argument core is:

The performance attributes like herding are going to be lost ---> The organizations should include those attributes in the description

The term shift is from descriptive in the premise (they will be lost) to normative in the conclusion (the organizations should do something about it).

(E) gives us the "should" that we are looking for. The dogs were originally intended to be able to herd so the organization should attempt to ensure that the dogs can continue to do that. The "attempt to ensure language" just means that they will be doing something by changing the standards but they're not guaranteed to be effective in saving the herding ability.

The wrong ones:

(A) is close but not quite right. The problem isn't that the other characteristics are hurting herding ability. Rather, dog breeders are simply focusing on the wrong things. The conclusion says they should add new descriptions, not change old ones.

(B) is out of scope. The conclusion calls for the standards to be changed, not enforced better.

(C) is just like (B), really. The conclusion is that they should add new standards.

(D) is also tempting. But be careful! The dogs aren't being used as working dogs now. If they were, the author wouldn't be worried about them losing that trait. The problem is that the dogs are just show dogs now and won't eventually be used as herding dogs. That's why they are losing the ability to herd.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Demetri

[matthew.mainen]

I think there is an additional way to rule out D. It only deals with set standards. It DOES NOT deal with standards that should be set but haven't been.

[WaltGrace1983]

I got this one wrong so I am going to analyze this one in depth.

The question is asking us for a principle that justifies the argument's conclusion. Already, we are looking for something that - if granted - will make it so that the conclusion 100% follows from the premises. Something great about this question is that it gives us the conclusion; no need to hunt for it!

The conclusion:
Pedigree organizations should set standards for working ability in dogs classified as working dogs

The premises:
-Dog breeders try to maintain only those traits specified by PO's
-Traits that breeders do not try to maintain risk being lost

So we get some conditional language here. The premises say the following:

Breeders try to maintain traits → Specified by PO's
~Risk being lost → Breeders try to maintain traits (the contrapositive)

So let's put these together with another contrapositive:

~Specified by PO's → Breeder's don't try to maintain traits → Risk being lost

Now we can logically see how all of this stacks up. Again, what is the conclusion saying? It is saying that we should set standards requiring working ability in pedigreed dogs. The gap here is that "We should do something about losing these traits!" These traits are lost, so what? Well, the argument thinks that these traits being lost is sufficient enough to warrant that we should do something about it! Let's look at the answer choices with this in mind:

(A) Oh this looks great! This has a lot of great language..."risk being lost" ... "should not set standards calling for a particular characteristic..." yea I like this! Let's keep it.
(B) Now we aren't talking about the nature of enforcing these standards. We are really just talking about the standards themselves. "The standards should require X" is the conclusion. This doesn't seem to stack up. Eliminate.
(C) This is very similar to (B). Once again, we are talking about the nature of enforcing these standards. Yet even if we say this is true, or we say this is false, what does this do to the conclusion? How does this prove, from the premise that traits will be lost, that we should do something about it?! It doesn't. Eliminate.
(D) Very tempting! Very close to what we are looking for! However, do we know anything about what these dogs will be used for? No we don't. Eliminate.
(E) This also looks great. Let's analyze this along with (A) and get a closer look.

(A) I originally picked A. It seemed great because I got tied up in that language about other characteristics being lost. This seemed like the principle that was being shown in the stimulus. In many ways, it was! However, there is a very key distinction to make. Here is what (A) is actually saying...

Standards increase the risk of some other characteristic being lost → Standards should not be set for a particular characteristics

I bolded these specific parts because these words are what makes (A) wrong. Let's look at the second bolded part. "Standards should not be set for particular characteristics..." The stimulus is simply not talking about this! The stimulus is talking about introducing new standards. It doesn't matter if one of the standards is that the dog must be able to eat a whole container of peanut butter in 2 minutes, this doesn't affect what is actually going on here. We just want to add the standard "requiring working ability in pedigreed dogs." That's it! In addition, the other bolded part gets to something that wasn't discussed. We are not really saying that characteristic X is putting characteristic W (the working characteristic) in danger. We are saying that these dog owners are focusing on the wrong things when breeding dogs. There is no risk in and of itself that one characteristic has on another. The characteristics are not at fault - the pedigree is at fault!

(E) is right. The part that got me turned around was the part about "serving the purposes for which they were originally developed." I thought to myself, "well that isn't really the same as herding ability. Maybe herding was not what they were originally intended for." However, in the stimulus, we get this part about breeds "originally developed as working dogs to perform for which they were developed." This connects the two ideas of "herding ability" and "working."

I got this wrong because I simply didn't have a complete understanding of the core. I focused too much on the specific ideas and didn't understand what the author was really trying to say.

[chunsunb]

(A) was not that tempting to me in the first place. This answer choice is a "should not" argument. The conclusion is a "should" argument.

An argument that one should not act in one way is irrelevant to determining whether one should act in another way.

Ruling out numerous LSAT questions depends on this point. It's particularly useful in a lot of "principle-application" questions. (The principle says one should do something if ....; the application is that one should not do something since ... -> This is definitely wrong!)

[AnaJ991]

What confused me about answer (E) was "attempt" to ensure -- this, in my opinion, does not justify the conclusion that pedigree organizations "should set" standarts. The word "attempt" modifies and lowers significantly the indent set forth in the conclusion -- which seems to pose a higher degree of responsibility on said organizations. Can someone share thoughts on this?

Thanks.

[StratosM31]

(D) Very tempting! Very close to what we are looking for! However, do we know anything about what these dogs will be used for? No we don't. Eliminate.

I saw that reasoning in another comment above. I don't think I agree with that reasoning for eliminating that answer choice though. If a pedigree is a "working dog", it signalizes what this dog is eventually going to be used for.

The reason why it is wrong is that it is talking about a particular thing that every standard that is set or to be set should contain. In a more formal language, it would be something like:

If a standard for activity or product X is set or to be set, then it should reflect the uses to which activity or product A will eventually be put. However, it does not tell us anything whether any standard should actually be set! If anything, it means that the current standards should be removed because they do not fulfill the necessary condition stated above, but it does not force us to set any new standards.

Choosing answer D leads to the logical flaw of the following format:

If you do A, then you should B.
So, you should do A and B.