Top Law Schools

PTing 166-170....I cant be certain why the correct answer is indeed correct...please explain!

Pretest A, Section IV, question 25



Louis: People’s intentions cannot be, on the whole, more bad than good. Were we able to believe otherwise ,we would inevitably cease to trust each other, and no society can survive without mutual trust among its members.



The argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?



(A) It fails to rule out the possibility that a true belief can have deleterious consequences

(B) It mistakenly assumes that if two claims cannot at the same time both be tru, then they cannot at the same time both be false

(C) It challenges the truth of a claim merely by calling into question the motives of those who profess that they believe it to be true

(D) It assumes without warrant that in any situation with two possible outcomes, the most negative one will inevitably occur

(E) It provides no reason that believe that a statement that is true of a given group of individuals is also true of any other group of individuals.

A

can you explain why A is correct?

Is it A?

The correct answer is indeed A....whats your reasoning?

thewolfandpeter wrote:The correct answer is indeed A....whats your reasoning?

wild guess.

the trick is to actually read and interpret what the hell the answer choices are saying. much of the lsat is figuring out when an answer isn't saying anything when it looks like it might be

I think it's A primarily through elimination and that answer (if you know what deleterious means) allows for a negative outcome, the variety of which is discussed in the statement.

No reason to assume that society has to survive according to the stimulus. Process of elimination may be easiest on that one.

ahhh i need a solid explanation....dear god some one help me...and what the hell is answer choice A saying? I was able to eliminate the other 4....

thewolfandpeter wrote:The correct answer is indeed A....whats your reasoning?

Roughly the logic in the stimulus was:

X can't be true because if people thought X was true society would fall apart.

A says: A true belief (or X in this case) can have negative consequences.

fonzerelli wrote:I think it's A primarily through elimination and that answer (if you know what deleterious means) allows for a negative outcome, the variety of which is discussed in the statement.

It's pretty easy... all you have to assume is that the society may indeed not survive. That's why the statement is vulnerable.

It's basically telling you something can't happen (in this case the belief that there are more bad than good people) because if that were the case, then society would fall of the face of the earth. Well guess what, that might happen.

The statement is saying you can't believe something that results in a negative outcome. Oh it surely can. Just look at our last administration. Sorry, don't mean to turn everything into a political thread.

fonzerelli wrote:

fonzerelli wrote:I think it's A primarily through elimination and that answer (if you know what deleterious means) allows for a negative outcome, the variety of which is discussed in the statement.

It's pretty easy... all you have to assume is that the society may indeed not survive. This statement is wishful thinking at it's flawed best.

+1 ^ correct explanation.

This gave me trouble too because of the wording of the answer.

It's actually pretty easy if you write it all out.

Conclusion: People’s intentions cannot be, on the whole, more bad than good.

Premise 1: Were we able to believe otherwise ,we would inevitably cease to trust each other

There's a conditional here: If (we believed NOT CONCLUSION) THEN (no trust)

Premise 2: No society can survive without mutual trust among its members.

There's another conditional here: IF (no trust) THEN (society not survive)

we can then connect 1 and 2: IF (we believed NOT conclusion) THEN (society can't survive)

we can see that the argument is basically saying that since A BELIEF would result in the ruin of society, that that BELIEF cannot therefore be true. which makes no sense, of course.

fonzerelli wrote:

fonzerelli wrote:I think it's A primarily through elimination and that answer (if you know what deleterious means) allows for a negative outcome, the variety of which is discussed in the statement.

It's pretty easy... all you have to assume is that the society may indeed not survive. That's why the statement is vulnerable.

It's basically telling you something can't happen (in this case the belief that there are more bad than good people) because if that were the case, then society would fall of the face of the earth. Well guess what, that might happen.

The statement is saying you can't believe something that results in a negative outcome. Oh it surely can. Just look at our last administration. Sorry, don't mean to turn everything into a political thread.

Thanks a lot, awesome explanation

skip james wrote:It's actually pretty easy if you write it all out.

Conclusion: People’s intentions cannot be, on the whole, more bad than good.

Premise 1: Were we able to believe otherwise ,we would inevitably cease to trust each other

There's a conditional here: If (we believed NOT CONCLUSION) THEN (no trust)

Premise 2: No society can survive without mutual trust among its members.

There's another conditional here: IF (no trust) THEN (society not survive)

we can then connect 1 and 2: IF (we believed NOT conclusion) THEN (society can't survive)

we can see that the argument is basically saying that since A BELIEF would result in the ruin of society, that that BELIEF cannot therefore be true. which makes no sense, of course.

Awesome explanation as well!!!

thewolfandpeter wrote:PTing 166-170....I cant be certain why the correct answer is indeed correct...please explain!

Pretest A, Section IV, question 25



Louis: People’s intentions cannot be, on the whole, more bad than good. Were we able to believe otherwise ,we would inevitably cease to trust each other, and no society can survive without mutual trust among its members.



The argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?



(A) It fails to rule out the possibility that a true belief can have deleterious consequences

(B) It mistakenly assumes that if two claims cannot at the same time both be tru, then they cannot at the same time both be false

(C) It challenges the truth of a claim merely by calling into question the motives of those who profess that they believe it to be true

(D) It assumes without warrant that in any situation with two possible outcomes, the most negative one will inevitably occur

(E) It provides no reason that believe that a statement that is true of a given group of individuals is also true of any other group of individuals.

this is a tough question. others have provided good answers, but I'll offer mine in case it's simpler

The stimulus states:

If we believed people's intentions were more bad than good, then society would not exist.


Let's simplify this to say "IF A, then B"

The argument states that because "A" leads to a "deleterious" consequence, then "A" cannot be true. But what if it is okay for a belief to have a "deleterious consequence"?...the "If..then" statement above might then be correct. And if it is correct, then the conclusion in the stimulus (more good than bad) would not necessarily follow.

this is NOT a tough question. Prephrased this perfectly without looking at the answer choices. I LOVE this, because i got a ? like this wrong before. There are 3 of these i believe in LSAT history.

Basically, just cause a consequence would f you up, doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. That's just wishful thinking on your part and thus a logical flaw, because it doesn't have any logical roots. Trust me, these are some of the MOST prephrasable LR ?'s .

I also arrived at the correct answer (A) during my PT, but with a slightly different approach:

What the stimulus is saying is...
BIBTG (Believing that Intentions are Bad Than Good) -> [strike]T[/strike] (No Trust) -> [strike]SS[/strike](No Society Survival)

The conclusion drawn based on this is "IBTG cannot be true," namely [strike]IBTG[/strike]. Let's think for a moment about a situation where [strike]IBTG[/strike] is true, hence B-[strike]IBTG[/strike] is a true belief. Can we say that this conforms to the argument? No. Because it would be a Mistaken Negation (B-[strike]IBTG[/strike] -> T -> SS). What if B-[strike]IBTG[/strike], a true belief, also stifles mutual trust, or causes other conceivable "deleterious consequences" that would prevent society from surviving? The correct answer (A) is pointing out exactly this.

I'm not sure if my approach was correct, but it enabled me to pick Answer (A) within 60 seconds.

LSAT Taker wrote:I also arrived at the correct answer (A) during my PT, but with a slightly different approach:

What the stimulus is saying is...
BIBTG (Believing that Intentions are Bad Than Good) -> [strike]T[/strike] (No Trust) -> [strike]SS[/strike](No Society Survival)

The conclusion drawn based on this is "IBTG cannot be true," namely [strike]IBTG[/strike]. Let's think for a moment about a situation where [strike]IBTG[/strike] is true, hence B-[strike]IBTG[/strike] is a true belief. Can we say that this conforms to the argument? No. Because it would be a Mistaken Negation (B-[strike]IBTG[/strike] -> T -> SS). What if B-[strike]IBTG[/strike], a true belief, also stifles mutual trust, or causes other conceivable "deleterious consequences" that would prevent society from surviving? The correct answer (A) is pointing out exactly this.

I'm not sure if my approach was correct, but it enabled me to pick Answer (A) within 60 seconds.

good for you that you got the answer so quickly. but your reasoning is not quite sound.

bakemono wrote:this is NOT a tough question. Prephrased this perfectly without looking at the answer choices. I LOVE this, because i got a ? like this wrong before. There are 3 of these i believe in LSAT history.

Basically, just cause a consequence would f you up, doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. That's just wishful thinking on your part and thus a logical flaw, because it doesn't have any logical roots. Trust me, these are some of the MOST prephrasable LR ?'s .

good for you that it wasn't tough to you. others have found it tough.

You can always count on somebody on TLS to chime in on a thread like this with a response like, "This question isn't hard AT ALL."

bakemono wrote:this is NOT a tough question.

fonzerelli wrote: It's pretty easy...

And it's usually after the question has been answered correctly.

This is the sort of question that demonstrates that a certain amount of pre-LSAT knowledge will make the test easier. It's basically a question of what theory of truth you subscribe to. If you've thought much about what makes a proposition true, you'll identify upon reading the stimulus that it has an essentially pragmatic outlook. Pragmatic theories of truth are not the norm, so your first reaction will be "Huh - mightn't some true beliefs have deleterious consequences? Or, at least, isn't our account of what makes a proposition 'true' more related to its coherence or, alternatively, to its correlation with some kind of reality?" If you haven't ever thought about what makes a proposition true, you might accept at face value this idea of the truth, in which case you'll need to go through a normal flaw analysis. That said, the normal flaw analysis gets you to the answer pretty quickly: it's just a questionable assumption here (whether or not you spot it instantly, having done a little bit of thinking about metaphysics before). B is obviously wrong; there's only one claim. C is obviously wrong; we're not talking about motives in the stimulus. D is obviously wrong; we're not talking about alternative outcomes in the stimulus. E is obviously wrong; we're not talking about alternative groups of individuals.

mallard wrote:This is the sort of question that demonstrates that a certain amount of pre-LSAT knowledge will make the test easier. It's basically a question of what theory of truth you subscribe to. If you've thought much about what makes a proposition true, you'll identify upon reading the stimulus that it has an essentially pragmatic outlook. Pragmatic theories of truth are not the norm, so your first reaction will be "Huh - mightn't some true beliefs have deleterious consequences? Or, at least, isn't our account of what makes a proposition 'true' more related to its coherence or, alternatively, to its correlation with some kind of reality?" If you haven't ever thought about what makes a proposition true, you might accept at face value this idea of the truth, in which case you'll need to go through a normal flaw analysis. That said, the normal flaw analysis gets you to the answer pretty quickly: it's just a questionable assumption here (whether or not you spot it instantly, having done a little bit of thinking about metaphysics before). B is obviously wrong; there's only one claim. C is obviously wrong; we're not talking about motives in the stimulus. D is obviously wrong; we're not talking about alternative outcomes in the stimulus. E is obviously wrong; we're not talking about alternative groups of individuals.

I think your philosophical explanation is a bit over the top. Just saying that it is possible for a true belief to have bad consequences is sufficient.

The only hard part is know what deleterious means. I figured it out from context.

Might wanna approach questions like that as soft logic instead of all the hard-core diagramming/explanations we tend to favour. The statement is basically, this can't happen because if it were to happen, there would be a really terrible social consequence. But he really doesn't justify why something can't be true if it has a terrible social consequence.

Imho its easy to go overboard with questions like this that seems like a bundle of conditions straight out of a logic game.

thewolfandpeter wrote:PTing 166-170....I cant be certain why the correct answer is indeed correct...please explain!

Pretest A, Section IV, question 25



Louis: People’s intentions cannot be, on the whole, more bad than good. Were we able to believe otherwise ,we would inevitably cease to trust each other, and no society can survive without mutual trust among its members.



The argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?



(A) It fails to rule out the possibility that a true belief can have deleterious consequences

(B) It mistakenly assumes that if two claims cannot at the same time both be tru, then they cannot at the same time both be false

(C) It challenges the truth of a claim merely by calling into question the motives of those who profess that they believe it to be true

(D) It assumes without warrant that in any situation with two possible outcomes, the most negative one will inevitably occur

(E) It provides no reason that believe that a statement that is true of a given group of individuals is also true of any other group of individuals.

This question looked familiar to me, but I couldn't remember where i had seen it. By preptest A you're referring to the LSAC Super Prep book. You DO know that the answers are explained at the back of the test???? LoL