by ohthatpatrick Sat Oct 10, 2015 7:03 pm
Yup, I think you pretty much nailed it. Great write-up!
The idea expressed in (D) really comes from the author of Psg B, as he defends his interpretation of Kant's argument.
We need to use the ideas that KANT himself gave us.
=== complete explanation ===
Should you lie to a pathological liar?
Psg A - the liar doesn't deserve the truth, but you probably shouldn't lie to him. After all, lying to him may harm YOU, society, the underpinnings of public trust, yada, yada.
Kant (Psg B) - you certainly are authorized to lie to him, as a sign of respect for his rational choice to lie. It shows that you respect him as a rational agent to reciprocate his rational choice to be a lying liar. So lying to a liar is treating him as a rational being.
I hate this question because I don't consider the passages too far apart in message: you have a RIGHT to lie to the liar, but we're not saying you SHOULD!
In LSAT's mind, there's at least some difference in tone / emphasis between the last P of psg A and the 1st P of psg B.
The former feels a little more like "you still shouldn't lie to him".
The latter feels a little more like, "Yeah, lie to him. That shows you respect him as a rational being."
The question stem wants us to harmonize psg B with psg A, so in order to make Kant's criterion for lying moot, we want to stop having to worry about treating this liar as a rational being.
(A) Some may hear this even going AGAINST Kant ... it sounds like lying to a liar is suddenly IR-rational. However, lying to a pathological liar is not PATHOLOGICAL behavior, so this rule isn't even applicable to our situation.
(B) Nice! If this pathological liar isn't rational, then we don't have to worry about Kant's desire to "respect his rationality" by lying back to him. Kant would now be more aligned with Psg A, thinking there's no good reason to lie to the liar.
(C) This goes the opposite direction of (B).
(D) This comes from the 2nd paragraph. In part that's a concern because it's not something Kant said directly but rather something the author is saying about Kant's philosophy. The other concern for me is that we already know this answer! Any question stem structured as "which of the following, if true" should give us some NEW gamechanger.
Because of this part of psg B, I didn't really think that psg A and Kant ever WERE in conflict or incompatible.
But in order to understand what this question stem is fishing for, we have to first identify where LSAT thinks there is friction between psg A and B. And the only way we could make sense of that task is to kinda go overboard with thinking that psg A is saying "DON'T lie to the liar" and Kant is saying "DO lie to the liar".
(E) This sounds like the beginning of Psg A. Kant would disagree with this, and say that as long as you're dealing with a rational thinker, modeling your thinking after theirs is to consistently employ rational standards.
Hope this helps