Q20 - it is absurd to argue

[frankdio]

I went back and forth between B and D.

Can someone help me get rid of D efficiently?

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your post!

I think we can see pretty clearly why (B) is correct: the philosopher defines "unnatural," and uses his definition to demonstrate why it doesn't make sense to say that people are morally obligated to act a certain way because acting differently would be unnatural.

Likewise, some of the wrong answers are pretty easy to knock off:

(A) -- he never argues that anything would violate a law of nature; in fact he says that's impossible.

(C) is out because there are no statistics here.

(E) is out because there is no empirical evidence, either.

Okay, so why not (D)? I see why it's tempting, but actually, he never says that the claim in question is self-contradictory. First, he does say you could never act in a way that violates a law of nature, but that doesn't make the claim self-contradictory, it just means that aspect of it is irrelevant. Second, he still leaves open the second definition of unnatural action, so his point is not that it's impossible, but that just because it's anomalous doesn't make it immoral.

Does that help, or are you still confused?

[legalrabbithole]

I've seen several incorrect answer choices that are worded similar to (D) and hinge on the concept of internal contradiction. I find these answer choices to be very tempting and I think it's because it's frequently included in questions stems that involve flawed reasoning.

Can someone elaborate on that? Is there a way to effectively cancel out this answer choice in future problems?

[demetri.blaisdell]

(D) is one of those tempting general answer choices for flaw questions. The general vocabulary gets more tempting as you get tired. "I don't really want to match it up. It sounds good enough," you think.

Fight the urge! If the stimulus is supposed to have a self-contradiction you have to find it. Does the author say or argue that we are in fact morally obligated to act in certain unnatural ways (contradicting the first sentence)? No. I tell my students not to let the LSAT win: don't be afraid of general answer choices. Try to match them up. If they don't match, cross off the answer choice and smile smugly knowing you didn't let LSAC get one over on you.

Demetri

[kaseyb002]

I spent 15 minutes looking at this question. Here's what I think is going on.

There are two ways for something to be unnatural:
1) violate law of nature
2) be a statistical anomaly

Then the dude philosopher says "it's impossible for one to violate the laws of nature". -Here is where I got tripped up. I think this shows that if the claimers' reasoning was based ONLY on that principle, then I think (D) would be correct also.

However, he also says "just because something is not usually done doesn't mean it should not be done". Okay, this part is NOT self-contradictory. This gives the claimers an out. They can say, "oh we know about the law of nature stuff, we're making our claim baised on the statistical anomaly reason."

This question showed me the mind of the test-makers. The ONLY reason they mentioned the stuff about the laws of nature was to get us to go for (D) (which I did). You can see, since there is an out for the claimers with the statistical anamoly reason, the whole thing about the laws of nature is irrelevant!

[hovaLSAT]

What is the correct definition of "empirical evidence" mentioned in choice E ? (in order to have an understanding if this pops up in the future)

Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

According to wikipedia "empirical evidence" is a source of knowledge acquired by observation of experimentation.

That sounds about right to me!

[aznriceboi17]

I spent 15 minutes looking at this question. Here's what I think is going on.

There are two ways for something to be unnatural:
1) violate law of nature
2) be a statistical anomaly

Then the dude philosopher says "it's impossible for one to violate the laws of nature". -Here is where I got tripped up. I think this shows that if the claimers' reasoning was based ONLY on that principle, then I think (D) would be correct also.

However, he also says "just because something is not usually done doesn't mean it should not be done". Okay, this part is NOT self-contradictory. This gives the claimers an out. They can say, "oh we know about the law of nature stuff, we're making our claim baised on the statistical anomaly reason."

This question showed me the mind of the test-makers. The ONLY reason they mentioned the stuff about the laws of nature was to get us to go for (D) (which I did). You can see, since there is an out for the claimers with the statistical anamoly reason, the whole thing about the laws of nature is irrelevant!

This sounds good to me, but I wanted to know what other people think. If the philosopher's statement was changed to 'An unnatural action is a violation of the laws of nature. There is no possibility of acting as one cannot.', then would D be correct? In other words, can countering the claim that

People are morally obligated to act in a certain way because not acting in that way is would be unnatural.

by saying that

There is no possibility of acting unnatural.

be described as showing that the claim is self-contradictory? 'Contradictory' doesn't seem like the word I'd use, in this case the philosopher is just ruling out the possibility of acting 'unnaturally' so a person can't label alternative behaviors as 'unnatural'.

[timsportschuetz]

Could a Manhattan teacher and/or other people with significant experience break down each answer choice for me? I am utterly confused on this question!

[christine.defenbaugh]

For questions that demand that you identify how the argument works, it's best to start by distilling down the core of the argument. What "technique" do all arguments use to support conclusions? They use premises! The premises hold the key to answering this question.

PREMISE
An unnatural act is either 1) violation of laws of nature or 2) statistical anomaly.
If #1, it's impossible.
If #2, it's unusual, and that's not a good reason to avoid it.
CONCLUSION
Absurd to argue that people are obligated to avoid "unnatural" behavior.

The first premise is the definition of the word "unnatural". The author uses that definition to point out the absurdism of the argument that people should avoid "unnatural" behavior. This matches up perfectly with (B)!


Unused Techniques
(A) Something "unnatural" might violate a law of nature. Accepting the absurd argument would not.
(C) There are no "statistical findings". The reference to "statistical anomaly" is simply part of the definition of "unnatural", and simply mean "unusual."
(E) The author uses both definitions as support for his conclusion, he doesn't argue for one over the other.

Let's discuss (D) a bit more. A number of posters have asked whether this would be correct if "unnatural" were only defined as "violation of law of nature."

It would be self-contradictory if the absurd argument claimed one was obligated to do something impossible. But the absurd argument claims one is obligated to refrain from impossible things (unnatural). It would be like reminding you that you are not allowed to levitate. It's silly, and kind of redundant, but not 'self-contradictory'.

So (D) would be incorrect even then.




The key to these questions is to distill the core, and take a hard look at the premises, and how they are supporting the conclusion! Let me know if this completely answers your question!

[timsportschuetz]

Awesome! I greatly appreciate your quick response and your knowledgeable feedback!!

[aradunakhor]

Something like 'ruling out all other alternatives' or 'providing a counterexample' seem like argument techniques, but is stating the definition of a key term really one as well? Establishing the definitions of keywords (so everyone's on the same page) seemed too fundamental to be called a technique.

I realize that this is a bit of a silly question, but I'm curious how other people see it. When I took this PT I spent a lot of time re-evaluating the other answer choices to see if they were correct because I was thrown off by this.

[uhdang]

Seems like I figured out most of the reasonings, but I can't make out the concept of "self-contradiction" in this case.

Self-contradiction indicates the case where an author claims NOT to do A but in order Not to do A, you have to do A.

When going through this question, I disregarded this issue of 'self-contradiction' because I simply thought that the author's consideration of being "absurd" doesn't account for 'self-contradiction.' But it seems like there is a quality or a possibility or a hint that lures people into D). I read through all posts, but didn't quite get it. Could anyone help me understand how this could have been self-contradictory argument?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting, uhdang!

I think it's absolutely awesome that you are challenging yourself to see how someone might get ensnared by the incorrect answers, even when you yourself were not so snared!!

I would be careful about so narrowly defining what 'self-contradiction' really means. If you give it a super-strict definition, then it's going to be easy to eliminate - and in some (other) situation, it's possible you might dismiss too easily. For a claim to be self-contradictory, there would need to be two components in the claim that are opposed to each other - that, at least, I'm sure of!

The primary temptation of (D) is that we talk about an unnatural act being impossible. The tendency is to think "well, we can't do something impossible, so I couldn't possibly be obligated to do something impossible - there's a contradiction embedded in that!" Now, that might not be a perfect application of the concept of self-contradiction, but I can see how someone gets there.

Fortunately, we don't actually have to get into the weeds of what self-contradiction really is to dismiss (D), since this answer is suggesting that the CLAIM is self-contradictory. But the claim is NOT that we are obligated to do an impossible thing - rather it's that we're obligated to AVOID an impossible thing. No contradictions at all in that, any way you slice it!

In other words, even the broad brush strokes of (D) go the wrong direction, and that's good - eliminating an answer for a complete mischaracterization is a lot more comfortable than eliminating the answer for getting the definition of self-contradiction slightly wrong!

As a general matter, while it's AWESOME to try to see what mistakes you'd have to make to be tempted by a particular answer choice, sometimes you just won't have a clue - and that's really okay. There are a number of wrong answers out there that you would only choose if you actually misread the argument to say something different than what it actually said.

Let me know if this helps!

[uhdang]

Oh, I see now..

So, there is a self-contradictory quality in saying, While we can't do something impossible, we are obligated to do something impossible. Now, I see it. But, in this argument, it asks us to avoid doing so, so it doesn't quite get to self-contradictory direction.

Thanks for the clarification!

[PhoebeL747]

For an argument to be self-contradictory, it needs to contain premises that cannot all be true at the same time. So there's no contradiction anywhere in the Philosopher's argument, nor in the argument he was trying to refute since neither contain premises that cannot all be true at the same time. For an argument to be self-contradictory, it needs to say something like "All action is natural and all natural actions are moral. But there are actions that are immoral." In this case, the two sentences can't be true at the same time and thus, when combined, constitute as self-contradiction.

[cgentry]

Question Type:Procedure

Stimulus Breakdown:Essentially, the philosopher is arguing against a position: failing to act a certain way is unnatural, therefore there is a moral obligation to act in a certain (natural) way. The philosopher believes this position is absurd.

The philosopher then presents two definitions of an unnatural act: against the laws of nature, or statistical anomalies.

“There is no possibility of acting as one cannot” should be translated as “there is no way to act against the laws of nature.” So, according to the philosopher, one of the two definitions of an unnatural act is not actually possible.

Then the philosopher attacks the second definition: statistical anomalies. The philosopher acknowledges statistical anomalies, but states that there is no moral component to a statistical anomaly.

So, if one accepts these premises, one definition of an unnatural act doesn’t exist, and the other definition of an unnatural act has no impact on morals, and so could not have any moral obligation.

Answer Anticipation:The philosopher argues by defining a key term, and using that definition to support their conclusion.

Correct answer:B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Although the philosopher mentions violations of laws of nature in a premise, they then continue to assert that such violations are not possible. This answer choice is, in a way, the opposite of the philosopher’s argument: if violations of laws of nature are impossible, then there is nothing that “would violate a law of nature”.
(B) This matches the prephrase, and should be kept.
(C) Although the author uses the term “statistical anomaly”, they offer no “statistical findings”. (I.e., there is no reference to a study or any research that offers findings.)
(D) This is a very, very tempting choice. However, we need to be careful how we translate this. Does the author undermine a claim? Yes--they say a claim is absurd. But they undermine that claim by showing that the term “unnatural” has no connection to morality. This is not a self-contradiction; it is merely an unsupported term.
(E) Although this choice does hinge on defining a key term, it brings up “empirical evidence”, and must be eliminated for the same reason C is eliminated: a definition on its own is neither “evidence” nor is it “findings”.

Takeaway/Pattern:
One archetype of argument is “application of a definition to a particular claim/instance”. Although this argument type is more commonly found in principle questions (the principle is the definition, and the situation described should be consistent with that definition), it can appear elsewhere.
#officialexplanation