#6 - Concept Reference, Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[Krwill]

Hello,

So I selected the correct answer on the exam but on a practice test selected D instead. I understand why B is correct but I wanted to check to see if my reasoning for why D is correct is sound. Is D incorrect because no where in the passage does it state that they msinterpreted archaeological evidence. Although the passage does state that archaeologists thought the area was not impressive it would be a big assumption to say that they misinterpreted data on the civilization.

[Jay Donnell]

Hi Krwill!

A simple (and very repeatable!) justification for the downfall of answer choice D relates to the logical force implied by the answer.

In RC, questions that ask for what the author agrees with are akin to Must Be True questions in LR, where the logical force of an answer choice is an integral element to its viability.

Softer/weaker language is much easier to prove. For example, which of these statements would you be most confident in agreeing with:

A) The Cleveland Browns will win the Super Bowl in 2020

B) The Cleveland Browns might win the Super Bowl in 2020

Now, I'm all aboard the Baker Mayfield hype train, but it would be really hard for me to bet on the Browns definitely winning the big show next season.

The weaker the answer, the easier it is to prove, so therefore the more likely it would be correct in a MBT situation.

It's often easy to spot a dangerous answer when it includes the word ALL, but in this case, and in so many others, even the word MOST is too much for us to 'afford' in an answer choice.

Some of the evidence may have been misinterpreted, but this answer loses it's opportunity for correctness when it jumped to most.


Hope that helps!

[medialaw111516]

I got this one wrong in practice and also picked D (which I totally get why it's wrong now), but I'm still struggling with how B can be correct. At the end of paragraph one, I see the part about the recent excavations which I think is what makes B correct, but I felt like B was saying that none of the conclusions reached before these recent excavations were credible, and we don't know that.

[Adam Tyson]

I totally get where you're coming from there, medialaw! It seems to be an awfully strong statement, suggesting that none of the earlier conclusions could have been credible (convincing, sensible, reasonable, etc.) Couldn't they have at least seemed credible, based on then-available information? For that reason I don't really love answer B.

But the author is looking back with 20/20 hindsight, and he knows those earlier conclusions (that the civilization was uninteresting) are NO LONGER credible. Our author would say that those earlier conclusions, based on insufficient evidence, were just plain wrong. For that reason, while it's a pretty strong statement, I think it's likely that our author would agree that it wasn't until we had the information that came from the recent excavations that anything resembling the truth of the matter could have been known. It's the best answer of the bunch, and the only one that we have any reason to believe the author MIGHT agree with. For that reason, although it is perhaps imperfect, it must be the credited response.

[owen95]

I didn't like any of these asnwers, and honestly I don't see how B is the best...

The passage starts out giving multiple statements about the Indus Valley civilization, which at some point or another must have been concluded... It flourished from 2,600 to 900 BC, it comprised 1,400 settlements, it was the largest ancient urban civilization (larger than Pharaohnic Egypt)... There doesn't seem to be anything in the passage to suggest that all of that knowledge about the civilization (size, location, dates) was only gained from the recent excavations; on the contrary, it seems to be presented as widely agreed upon facts that have been established for some time. Plus, we know that Mr. Mortimer - even though his specific theory was wrong - and the other historians all the way back in the 1920s had at least accurately concluded that the Indus Valley civilization at some point had a steep decline.
So we have at the very beginning several statements that the author clearly thinks are credible, and that at some point prior to the excavations in question must have been concluded, based off of sufficient evidence....

i'm really trying to avoid fighting the test here and to use this as a productive opportunity to get into the test-makers' heads... but I just don't understand why when they were writing these answer choices they woud choose to make B so extreme. "Conclusions regarding the civilization" just seems to be way too wide of an umbrella...

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Owen!

As Adam notes above, answer choice (B) isn't perfect. But since we know it's the correct answer, let's try to figure out why it's the best. Let's start with looking at the precise wording:

"It is only in recent years that scholars have gathered evidence sufficient to enable them to reach credible conclusions regarding the civilization."

This doesn't mean that scholars didn't draw conclusions before. Only that the recent archaeological data provides adequate support for credible conclusions and in the past the conclusions they made were not based on data that was not as strong. Even if some of those early conclusions were confirmed by the recent archaeological data, they may have only become credible in the author's mind because we now have more solid evidence.

It also seems that the LSAT is taking a narrower definition of "conclusions regarding the civilization." Information about the civilization's size and location might not really fit that definition--these seem closer to observable facts and don't tell us much about the people of the civilization or the story of how it came to rise and fall. Think back to the example with Mortimer. Mortimer and others knew the civilization had declined. The fact that it declined isn't really a conclusion--if the civilization doesn't still exist, it must have declined at some point. It's an indisputable fact, not something deduced by reasoning. But Mortimer concluded that the cause of the civilization's decline was Indo-Aryan invaders. Presumably, since it was a point of contention, other scholars concluded their own potential causes of the decline. The recent archaeological evidence, however, shows that their previous conclusions were not credible and that it is more likely that the reason for the decline was some sort of environmental catastrophe.

Also, note that the question stem states that we're looking for something that "the author would be most likely to agree with." This is like the difference between a Must Be True and a Most Strongly Supported question. In either type, you're looking for the answer choice that is best supported out of all the options. But with Most Strongly Supported, you can hold that answer choice to a slightly lower standard. We need something that the author would be most likely to agree with; not something that the author would 100% agree with.

And ultimately, to see that (B) is the best, you have to see that it gets closer to the correct answer than any of the other choices. There's nothing in the passage about a small group of scholars controlling data on the civilization, so (A) is out. Definitely nothing to support that those Sumerian tablets were the only known written references to the civilization, so (C) is out. The author says it's the recent excavations that have supplied the important data that has revealed more about the civilization, so the author wouldn't agree that an adequate amount of data on the civilization has existed for decades, and (D) is out. The author doesn't say anything about a broader trend in archaeology to avoid overreliance on written evidence, so (E) is out. Even thought it might be a little stronger than we'd like, answer choice (B) is the most supported out of these five since we can get rid of the other four not just based on a matter of degree of certainty, but based on a total lack of support.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey