Q18 - Philosopher: The rational pursuit

[lisahollchang]

This type of question is very difficult for me. Can you offer any pointers on how to approach it? For this question, I answered E. I can see why B can be correct, but still can't see why E is wrong.

Thanks!

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your question!

Here we're being asked to make an inference about what must be false based on the given statements. So our job is to check each answer choice against the givens, asking along the way, "Could this be true?" In other words, we want to see whether anything in the given statements rules out the possibility of the answer choice.

(B) is correct because we're told that some desires are compulsions, and that compulsions lead to goals that provide no happiness. So it must be false that attaining the goal of any desire results in momentary happiness.

(E), on the other hand, is not contradicted by the given statements. We're never told anything that rules out the possibility that all actions have long-term consequences; we have no idea whether this is so, but it certainly could be true based on the statements.

(A) could be true; we have no idea how common compulsions are.

(C) could be true; we have no idea how common the rational pursuit of happiness is.

(D) could be true; we have no idea what most people want.

Does that clear this one up at all for you, or are you still stumped?

[lisahollchang]

Thanks, this does help! I guess the best strategy with this one is to line up each answer with the stimulus and see if it could be true or not? This type of question seems to be very time-consuming.

[giladedelman]

Yes, you certainly need to evaluate every answer choice relative to the stimulus. One thing that might help you gain some efficiency on these questions is to pay attention, when you go over your work, to the ways in which the test tries to trick you. What kinds of wrong answers do you have the most trouble spotting? The more work you put into understanding the wrong answers, the faster you'll become at eliminating them when you see a new question.

[steves]

FYI - In the 10 Real LSAT Book (practice sets), this question seems out of order on page 429--as if it were from PT 45 instead of PT 44. I just figured out that it came from PT 44 Section 4. Perhaps I'd be doing better with LR (and LG!) if I could have figured that out more quickly