Q5 - The best explanation for Mozart's death

[LSAT-Chang]

Would someone be willing to walk me through this problem?? This reminded me of another problem (Beethoven's hair consisting of mercury or not) which I also had trouble with. I was ultimately down to (A) and (B), and just picked (B) out of guess (lucky to have gotten it correctly since I took the full PT test timed, but didn't feel too good since it was ultimately just a guess). I first thought this was an analyze the argument question and thought it was going to ask what ROLE it played (premise, conclusion, etc.) but it ended up asking me something different (never seen one of these before). I had no clue how we could say that the last sentence shows that the fracture did not occur after Mozart's death. It does seem like a simple question at first, but I guess I'm not understanding something here.. any help?

[timmydoeslsat]

This argument's conclusion is the first sentence, which is that the best explanation of Mozart's death involves the recently discovered fracture in his skull.

The rest of the argument is supporting this.

Evidence is:

Crack likely came from an accident, which would could have torn veins in his brain, in which blood would leak into the brain.
+
When this kind of bleeding occurs, it can dry and cause damage to the brain's faculties. This commonly leads to death, although not necessarily immediately.
+
(This is what question is about) The fracture shows signs of partial healing.


The role that this last premise shows is that this is yet another piece to back up the claim that the fracture recently discovered caused the death.

Choice B is telling us that since the fracture showed signs of partial healing, this fracture did not take place after death.

It is essentially saying that it is not the case that somewhere along the way, many years later, accidentally dropped the skull or something. This partial healing aspect of the fracture does aide in the claim of this being involved in Mozart's death. It clearly does not prove the claim. This argument is clearly invalid. However, that is how that claim functions.

Answer choices:

A) No evidence of this, especially with this partial healing claim.

B) Correct answer

C) We are not even certain that this happened according to the argument. Even so, the last claim of this argument does not relate to that aspect.

D) The last claim does not show that. It could be suddenly or a long-drawn out death.

E) We have no evidence of this being an accident or not. Perhaps it was a deliberate smashing of Mozart's head with a rock?

[camerojg]

Originally chose B, but then switched to C. Still having trouble explaining why C is wrong on my own. Would really appreciate some help with this.

[nflamel69]

I would like to offer some of my insights in addition to timmys

A is wrong like timmy suggested

C is wrong not because there isn't evidence there is not impairment; the evidence says there is damage to the brain faculties, so there isn't a big leap in logic there. But the answer suggest there is a causal relationship going on, that the dried blood caused the faculty impairment, while the evidence simply says these 2 events have a correlation, no explicit causation is there

D is wrong because we have no idea anything about his death besides the best explanation

E is wrong is because the fracture is accidental, not his death. if anything, his death is likely after the accident following the premises

[shirando21]

Initially, I was not able to eliminate C. But if we look back to the question, it asks us about " the claim that the fracture shows signs of partial healing ", this part only tells us that the fracture happened when he was still alive. If he died immediately, there wouldn't be healing. So, we can only figure out from there that the crack happened before his death.

This claim does not tell us anything about C. So, C is out.

[T.J.]

I think a good way to do this type of question fast and accurately is to focus on the conclusion. Since the conclusion is essentially saying that it's the skull fracture that is responsible for Mozart's death, the sole purpose of the claim "shows signs of partial healing..." is to support the conclusion. How? By saying that the fracture occurred when Mozart was still alive. Also, it mentions "this explanation is bolstered", an indication of supporting premise.
However, C goes after the premise which explains how fracture can lead to one's death. It is essentially a premise booster.

[andrewgong01]

I had a lot of trouble with this one strangely. "This explanation... [last sentence]" I thought was reffering to the explanation in the sentence right before it, which was on the brain being damanged via bleeding. How do we know the "this explanation" refers to the first sentence? Because of this, I thought C was viable. I guess E was a bit extreme since the argument never said it was accidental but most likely accidental. The other reason why I did not like "B" was that closing the potential gap that the crack occured AFTER Mozart's death just felt out of scope to me in the argument , especially since this was not a weaken/strengthen question but a determine function question.

Other Choices
D = If anything it seemed like Mozart had a slower death since there was time for healing.
A= Avoided? This is out of scope unless the argument talked about the lack of medical attention given to Mozart etc