Q15 - It was misleading for James

[kmewmewblue]

I kind of get that, but cannot explain well.
Could you elaborate this, please?

Also, the conclusion states "It was misleading for James to tell the CCC that the chair of Anth.Dep had endorsed his proposal."
Do I supposed to understand as "Anth.Dep did not endorse James's proposal"?

Thanks in advance!

[maryadkins]

The core is:

The chair said he had her endorsement only if he implemented all the recommendations.

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It was misleading of James to say the chair endorsed his proposal.

The gap is what? The proposal must not have all the recommendations. (E).

Careful about rephrasing the conclusion as you did. You're right that if we say it was misleading of him to say she endorsed, then that means she didn't endorse, but we want to keep the language and structure of the conclusion as intact as possible so we don't accidentally bring our own term shifts into the picture.

(A) is irrelevant. There's nothing about implementing them.

(B) The argument does not need to assume this. It is about the proposal she did see.

(C) This doesn't tell us whether he mislead them or not by neglecting to put in all the recommendations she wanted...

(D) Good for James! But the argument is that he misled the committee, and to have misled the committee, he needed to have lacked the endorsement. We're looking for a reason why he lacked the endorsement.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Ran through this one somewhere else and so thought I'd add my run through here as well.

The conclusion is that James was misleading when he said that he had the endorsement of the chair of the Anthropology department. The evidence for this is that James had the department chair's endorsement only if the proposal she saw had everything in it that James would present to the Core Curriculum Committee.

It sounds like James did have the endorsement of the Anthropology department chair. So why would the author claim that James was misleading? The only way that could be is if James presented proposals that were not in the draft he showed the department chair. So he goes to the department chair and shows her some proposals. She says I like this and I'll give you my endorsement if this is exactly what you propose to the curriculum committee. Then suppose James goes to the curriculum committee and shows them some different proposals, but says he has the department chair's endorsement. Okay, that would be misleading - and such a situation is presented in answer choice (E).

Let's look at the incorrect answers
(A) doesn't impact whether James was misleading in his presentation of his proposals and his claim of having an endorsement. This answer choice is all about the consequences after the fact.
(B) is not necessary, but is very tempting. The word "any" is too strong. If the department chair would only have opposed some of the recommendations, James still would have been misleading.
(C) may be true, but has no impact on whether or not James was actually misleading in his claim of having the department chair's endorsement.
(D) would undermine the conclusion that James was misleading and so cannot represent an assumption of the argument. Assumptions, when added, always strengthen a conclusion.

Hope that helps!

[aznriceboi17]

Hi, I wanted to double check something about the logic.

If James legitimately had the chair's endorsement, then we know that the draft proposal the chair saw included all the recommendations James presented to the committee.

However, if James did not legitimately have the chair's endorsement, then it is still possible that the draft proposal the chair saw included all the recommendations James presented to the committee, is that correct? In that case it would simply mean some other condition (that we're not told about) was violated. Since no answer choice involved this, we then conclude as in E that the proposal didn't contain all the recommendations James made to the committee.

[ganbayou]

Just wanted to double check...so the conclusion says that James told the Core curriculum that he got endorsement, but it was wrong (misleading), right?

[aescano209]

Just wanted to double check...so the conclusion says that James told the Core curriculum that he got endorsement, but it was wrong (misleading), right?

Yes. The conclusion here is just saying that it was misleading for James to have said that the chair of the Anth. Dept. had given him the endorsement.

Evidence? Evidence is that the chair would have endorsed it only if it included the same recommendations that she saw that would be presented to the committee.

[CharlesS800]

For this question, I was debating between D and E as answer choices. I chose E because, when negated, it cratered the argument.

I think, though, that I could have avoided reaching that point if I had been a little more careful in my evaluation of the verbiage in answer choice D, specifically the words "thought" and "would have."

I see the premise of this argument as:

IF the chair of the Anthro dept. endorses proposal THEN the draft proposal she saw included all recommendations for CCC

The "thought" and "would have" in this answer choice seems indicative that James has made alternations outside of those that were agreed to, ones that would no longer leave the If/then statement fulfilled. Because of this, I would eliminate answer choice D.