Q19 - It is obvious that one

[opulence2001]

Could someone please explain why A is incorrect?

I understand why D is the stronger answer, but I thought A could work. What happened here was I read A, believed it worked for the argument, and moved on bc I assumed that there is only one right answer, not one relatively more correct answer.

Thanks in advance!

[giladedelman]

Ahhh!!! What a huge learning moment this is!

Thanks so much for your post. This is exactly why you must ALWAYS check EACH answer choice on logical reasoning (and reading comprehension). All too often, answer (A) or (B) looks pretty good, and you won't realize why it's incorrect until you see the better answer further down. In fact, I just took a minute to look at this question myself, for the first time, and I said to myself, hmm, (A) looks good, but I'd better check them all.

So, what's wrong with it? Well, notice that we're looking for "an assumption on which the argument depends" -- in other words, a necessary assumption.

Now, the argument concludes that you should have a will stating your wishes, because otherwise a larger portion of your estate will go to distant relatives you don't even know instead of your friends. (D) is correct because it's necessary to assume that people aren't indifferent about their estates: if they were indifferent, if they didn't care, then there would be no reason to write up a will.

(A), on the other hand, is incorrect because it is sufficient, but not necessary. If no one wanted their estates to go to strangers, then the conclusion would follow. But this doesn't have to be true. Maybe some people actually do want their estates to go to people they don't know, but they want their friends to get a larger share of it. Or, they want their estates to go to people they don't know, but not to distant relatives they don't know. And so on. We can imagine this argument making sense even if (A) isn't assumed, which is why it's not necessary.

(B) is out of scope -- "deserving"?

(C) is likewise out of scope -- just vs. unjust doesn't come up here.

(E) is incorrect because the issue is not about who has more legal rights, it's about whom the dead person wants his estate to be left to.

Does that answer your question? ALWAYS investigate each answer choice! Your attitude should always be to work from wrong to right; eliminate four wrong answers before you worry about the right one.

[opulence2001]

I think we all learned something here today...lol

That definitely helps thank-you! I will be reading all the questions for LR and RC for sure now!

[t_wm]

Is it necessary for people to be "generally" not?
Doesn't it seem a little stronger?
Can I say that the choice (D) would be better if it changes "generally" to "often", "frequently", or "regularly"?

Any thought would be appreciated. : )

[alandman]

Is it necessary for people to be "generally" not?
Doesn't it seem a little stronger?
Can I say that the choice (D) would be better if it changes "generally" to "often", "frequently", or "regularly"?

Any thought would be appreciated. : )

I believe on the LSAT, logically speaking, 'generally' is interchangeable with all the other words you have listed.

[redcobra21]

Thanks for the great response! This helps quite a bit.

I have a question about how you would apply the negation technique to this question. When I negate (A), I get: "Some people want their estate to go to someone they have never met." That seems to destroy the conclusion. If you know that (1) the absence of a will means that distant relatives whom you've never met will get your estate, but you now know that (2) some people want their estate to go to someone they have never met, how could they conclude that (3) everyone should have a will outlining how the estate should be distributed? The negation seems to undermine the conclusion.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Hi redcobra21!

The answer to your question lies in the strength of answer choice (A). Do you really need it to be true that no one wants his or her estate to go to someone they have never met. Couldn't it be true that there are some people out there that do want their estates to go to people they have never met (say a charity group)? It may still turn out to be true that one should create a will. I don't see this point as undermining the argument's reasoning.

However the negation of (D) clearly undermines the argument's reasoning. If people are indifferent, then who gets control of the estate doesn't matter!

Hope that helps!

[timsportschuetz]

Respecting answer choice A, it should be noted that since this is a sufficient assumption question, the correct answer choice has to be narrower than the argument's scope. Thus, answer A references "someone he or she has never met". However, the question is much more narrow in scope than answer choice A's language. It specifically talks about "distant relatives whom one has never even met". A lot of sufficient questions have trap answers such as these! Be very careful that the scope of the answer choice is WITHIN and/or EQUIVALENT in strength as the original question.

Also, I would like to address incorrect answer E. We are never looking for premise boosters/destroyers and/or restatements of conclusions and premises in assumption (necessary and sufficient) question answers! Answer E directly contradicts the premise from the argument! Simply restating the original premise or stating it in an opposite fashion does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the argument core!

[WaltGrace1983]

Respecting answer choice A, it should be noted that since this is a necessary assumption question, the correct answer choice has to be narrower than the argument's scope. Thus, answer A references "someone he or she has never met". However, the question is much more narrow in scope than answer choice A's language. It specifically talks about "distant relatives whom one has never even met". A lot of necessary assumption questions have trap answers such as these! Be very careful that the scope of the answer choice is WITHIN and/or EQUIVALENT in strength as the original question.

Fixed for you. You meant to say necessary but you accidentally said sufficient.

I'd like to add a bit to help solidify my own reasoning.

Without a legal will, distant relatives whom one has never met have a greater legal right to one's estate than beloved friends do
→
One ought to have a will, stating how one wishes the estate to be distributed

Something to note is that this premise is specifically talking about people without a legal will; notice that scope of the argument. Also notice how the conclusion is a recommendation. We can thus expect to justify that recommendation a tiny bit. What is the gap? The gap is between having the estate distributed to distant relatives and what we ought to do? The argument is assuming that there are some people who don't want to distribute their estate to people they have never met or that some don't want to give more legal rights to beloved friends than distant relatives.

(A) is strong. Too strong. (A) is saying that no one ever wants their estate to go to someone he or she has never met. However, the argument is really only talking about people without wills. I bet there are some people with wills who don't mind if their estate gets donated to a charity, a business, etc.

(B)/(C) talk about "deserving" and "justice" and these just don't work due to scope.

(D) works. If people are indifferent to how their estate is distributed then why "ought" we write a will?

(E) is interesting because it just simply contradicts the main premise. We have to take the premise as true and yet this says, "nope! you're false!"

[DPCTE4325]

Hi Patrick!

I’m having a hard time understanding why E is wrong. Isn’t it implied that the author thinks that how under the current laws, distant relatives have more of a claim than close friends. Surely the author thinks this isn’t a just arrangement in that close friends SHOULD have a better claim.

If we negate E we get “one’s beloved friends do not have a greater legal right...” doesn’t this weaken the argument? OR would it not hurt the argument because the author would then just say “yeah they don’t but tbh they SHOULD”?

[ohthatpatrick]

The author isn't assuming that one's beloved friends have a greater LEGAL right. If the author believed that, he would find the current laws to be bad laws that should be changed. But he isn't agitating for the law to be changed.

He's agitating for people to make a will, so that the default provisions of the law won't come to bear.
So, he's assuming that many people would want to avoid the default provisions of the law being the way their estate gets dispersed.

I don't think HE needs to even personally have a conviction that "unknown relatives" is a worse option than "beloved friends". He just needs to think that (at least some of) the people he's giving advice to would object to the default option of the current laws.