Q4 - Politician P: My opponent claims

[tamwaiman]

Hi all

Regarding to (D), one explanation says that the issue is not irrelevant and another says that there is "only" one issue.

Shall I notice the plural/singular form in LR question?
Could it be a "mistaken point"?

ps. PT25-S4-Q22 shows the same question, one explanation eliminates (D) because of "one" policy.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I'm so sorry but I don't see the relationship to PT25, S4, Q22, but I'd be happy to provide an explanation to this question!

The argument's conclusion is that the politician's opponent is simply mistaken. The evidence for this claim is that people would be unhappy with it.

Just because people would unhappy with something, doesn't it make it the wrong thing to do. We're asked to find an answer choice that describes a flaw in the method of reasoning. Many of the answer choices are rather tempting, given that this question is so early in the section.

(A) is unsupported. The supporter doesn't advocate other unpopular views, just the one!
(B) is a common (yet in this case) incorrect answer choice. The author does call into question someone's view, but not their character.
(C) correctly describes the absurd reasoning in the stimulus.
(D) is unsupported. The consequences related to raising of the tax are not wholly unrelated to whether the government is obligated to raise taxes. They just don't support the conclusion in this case.
(E) is the opposite. The author challenges the claim that an obligation exists.

I hope this helps clear this one up! Let me know if you still need some more help with it.

[tamwaiman]

Hi mshermn

Thank you.

In fact I thought that when doing LR questions I should pay attention to the logic rather than grammar, but I'm not very sure it is right, especially in these two questions mentioned.

And some "explanations", although they are correct in the vast majority, sometimes I don't think they really point the error out.

[sumukh09]

Hey guys,

I thought D) was the better answer for this question since the taxpayers' being upset is irrelevant to whether the government has an obligation to raise taxes to increase funding. I just don't see how the two could be related. Moreover I thought C) was too strong in that it included the term "unhappiness."

[wj097]

Hey guys,

I thought D) was the better answer for this question since the taxpayers' being upset is irrelevant to whether the government has an obligation to raise taxes to increase funding. I just don't see how the two could be related. Moreover I thought C) was too strong in that it included the term "unhappiness."

Got this wrong exactly for that reason...but looking back, unhappiness is justified by the word "upset" and tax payer being upset is relevant, since it talks about something RELATED to the issue at hand, tax raising; though not effective still relevant

[redcobra21]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the helpful discussion with this question so far.

I've just got a question about (C). If the reasoning is questionable because it is based on the "grounds that its implementation would lead to unhappiness," isn't this basically just a way of saying that the discussion about unhappiness is irrelevant to whether the view is false? That makes sense because the people's unhappiness doesn't really appear to be related to whether the view is mistaken, since the opponent's view is about how taxes can be used to fund schools and health care.

But my question is: how exactly does this make (C) different from (D)? The two answers look awfully similar. Or am I missing something about (C) in my explanation above?

Thanks in advance for your help

[eve.lederman]

I originally thought the answer was C but then I reasoned that "unhappiness" is different from "upset" (in the stimulus). Why does the equivocation not matter here?

I picked D because I thought "irrelevant issues" were the taxpayers' emotions since the issue in the stimulus is about raising taxes.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting eve.lederman! Let me try to answer your question, as well as redcobra21's and sumukh09's.

On "unhappiness"
There is no significant difference between describing taxpayers as "upset" or "unhappy". It's important to remember that the LSAT does not generally engage in hairsplitting on fuzzy connotations of words. An answer can, and often is, wrong as a result of a single word - but if so, the issue has to be clear.

Remember, if tiny and debatable connotations of words were enough to eliminate answer choices, then the LSAT would never be allowed to use synonyms or rephrasing for anything. They would have to restate everything exactly verbatim - and they clearly don't do that.

The concept of "equivocation" generally applies when the same word is used to mean two different things in two places. Here, we have two different words, so if they really did mean different things, we might describe it as a detail creep (or as being out of scope). However, these two words mean essentially the same thing. DON'T ENGAGE IN HAIRSPLITTING ON THE LSAT! It will only end in frustration.

The Various Reasons Why (D) is Wrong
Okay, put on your pedantic paranoia glasses! And I'm afraid that you do have to learn the difference between pedantic about what each word means (totally fair game) and hairsplitting on nuances of similar words (not fair game).

"irrelevant issues" - are the taxpayer's feelings irrelevant to the question? I'm not entirely sure. I think I could make a cogent argument (as wj097 points out) that they are somewhat relevant, just flimsy support. I could probably also make an argument that they are for the most part irrelevant.

On some level, every bad argument is using support that is at least in some way irrelevant - that's why it's a bad argument.

"wholly" - okay, so even if we argue that the voters' feelings are irrelevant, is it clear that they are wholly irrelevant? How taxpayers feel about government spending surely has some bearing on what might be the rights and obligations of that government (which is paid for and authorized by those taxpayers).

"to deflect attention away" - if the 'real issue' is "what are gov't's obligations?", then how can we know that this author is raising the taxpayer feelings for the purpose of deflecting attention away from that question? A straightforward reading of the stimulus shows that the author is, instead, simply using the taxpayer feelings as support for an answer to the question. To know that he's trying to "deflect attention away" from that issue, we'd need to be a mindreader.

Whether or not the issues are generally relevant or irrelevant is actually the LEAST damning part of (D)! Sometimes we get caught in the mire of determining the value of a single word like this, when there are other parts of the answer choice that offer up far more vulnerable wording.

Being willing to let go of our first love and carefully assess (or reassess) the entire answer choice can often save us from initial biases.

Please let me know if this clears up your questions on this!

[QingyiY938]

I also was between C and D but like many have said in earlier posts, "wholly irrelevant" is way too strong. Flaw questions are essentially provable questions. THe stimulus needs to prove that the author is committing the flaw. Also, the idea about deflecting away from the real issue. After assessing the prompt again, I don't think there is an issue. If anything, the politician just has an issue with the argument. And they provide evidence for why they have an issue with the argument itself.

I think for D to make sense, it has to go something like Increased pollution is making people fall ill and die. So my opponent supports raising taxes. But raising taxes will make taxpayers upset. So we should not raise taxes. This might not be the perfect example but in this argument, it's straying away from the issue of pollution and people dying to taxpayers will be upset.