Q25 - Louis: People's Intentions cannot

[lovelessim]

I am really having a hard time wrapping my head around this problem...even after reading LSAC's explanation. Could anyone try to explain this problem, connecting elements from the stimulus to the correct answer.

Thanks.

[giladedelman]

Thanks for your post! I'll do my best to succeed where LSAC failed you.

Let's break down this argument:

If we were to believe that people's intentions are more bad than good, then we'd stop trusting each other, and society would fall apart without trust. Therefore, it must be true that people's intentions are not more bad than good.

Do you see any gaps here? The first red flag should be that the premise is talking about what would happen if people believed something, while the conclusion is talking about whether that belief is true. It's kind of like if I said, "If children believed they were inevitably going to die, they would be completely depressed all turn into criminals. Therefore, death must not be inevitable."

Do you see my point? There's a big assumption here, namely that if believing something would have negative consequences, then that belief itself must be false.

(A) is correct because it identifies this assumption, but in a wacky way. The argument assumes that if a belief has negative consequences, it must be false. In logical terms it would look like this:

Negative consequences ---> False

And the contrapositive would be

True ---> not negative consequences

In other words, the argument assumes that if a belief is true, it doesn't have negative consequences. So it ignores the possibility that a belief could be true and have negative consequences.

This is also a good example of how working from wrong to right can help us with difficult LR problems:

(B) is out of scope. Where does the argument talk about two claims that cannot both be true?

(C) is out of scope. The argument never mentions people who believe the claim, let alone questions their motives!

(D) is out of scope. Two possible outcomes?

(E) is -- drum roll -- out of scope. The argument doesn't talk about any particular groups of individuals; it talks about people in general the whole time.

So, how'd I do? Better than LSAC, or are you still stumped? If you are, let me know, and I'll have another crack at it.

[cyruswhittaker]

So let's say we replaced "negative consequences" with B.

Would an abstract form look like this:

True--> B

Therefore, False.

Assumption:

B-->False

Contrapositive:

True-->~B

So basically A is attacking the contrapositive of the assumption by saying that the necessary condition for something to be true (no negative consequences) might in fact not be necessary.

??

[giladedelman]

Yup!

[deid]

i was doing the question under the assumption that 'societies not surviving' because of lack of mutual trust was not just a negative consequence, but an impossibility altogether, since all societies in our world today are 'surviving'... so are we assuming that it is possible that no society is surviving/will survive?

(sorry for resurrecting a 2 year old thread :p)

[hall.briandavis]

i was doing the question under the assumption that 'societies not surviving' because of lack of mutual trust was not just a negative consequence, but an impossibility altogether, since all societies in our world today are 'surviving'... so are we assuming that it is possible that no society is surviving/will survive?

(sorry for resurrecting a 2 year old thread :p)

Yeah, I felt the same way... Thought that the argument had been proved through contradiction. I suppose the error in that reasoning is that it is us bringing our 'outside information' into the argument. Hypothetically an earth could exist without society. It never states that society is still surviving, so we cannot assume that it is a contradiction.

Just frustrating b/c that is a true logical reasoning and sometimes those small jumps seem necessary at times in the LSAT (I am thinking of most strongly supported). Need to code switch and remember not to do that for assumption questions.

[rinagoldfield]

i was doing the question under the assumption that 'societies not surviving' because of lack of mutual trust was not just a negative consequence, but an impossibility altogether, since all societies in our world today are 'surviving'... so are we assuming that it is possible that no society is surviving/will survive?

(sorry for resurrecting a 2 year old thread :p)

Deid,

Your question is a good one. Frankly, this is an issue I also struggled with on this problem.

I think we can work through this in a couple of ways.

We can interpret "society failing to survive" either as an impossibility, or as a terrible, but not impossible, outcome. Louis’s argument doesn’t make explicit which interpretation is correct, and answer choice (A) only deals with the second interpretation. However, we are looking for the answer choice that "most" criticizes the argument, not the answer choice that perfectly points out its every flaw. Answer choice (A) successfully makes vulnerable one facet of Louis’s argument, and that’s all we need.

Even if you couldn’t get to (A) through reasoning, you could still get there by eliminating the other possibilities. Answer choices (B) through (E) are all clearly out of scope. They don’t even come close to Louis’s argument, let alone make make it vulnerable. (A) is the only answer choice that deals with the argument’s main issue_ beliefs.

[csunnerberg13]

I've read the explanation and it's starting to make sense for me - how would you diagram the argument core of this question??

[blairped]

Is this question an example of "Appeal to Consequences" flaw?!

[SJK493]

I was unable to understand the answer (A) that ‘a true belief can have deleterious consequences.’ Is there a flaw in the reasoning (or reasoning rules in general) about believing/supposing/hypotheticals that I should be aware of?

I found another similar question in Superprep Test C (February 2000) Section 2 Question 18 that are not entirely similar but both questions involve using a hypothetical situation (if you were to believe A, then B) and discussing the consequences to arrive at an argument. What are the key takeaways for questions like this?