#8 - City council member: The Senior Guild has asked for a

[ssangha]

Hey guys,

Im kind of embarrassed that i have to ask you guys about an 87% flaw question, however i am having trouble understanding why the answer i picked is wrong. I picked A thinking that it was a straw man and the the council member distorted the argument and attacked that argument. I understand why C works as well i am just not sure why the LSAC's answer is better than mine?

Thank You!!

[Ron Gore]

Thank you for your question, ssangha. And no need to be embarrassed! We all have a question now and then that gets in our logical blind spot.

When a straw man argument appears in a stimulus, what you'll typically see are two speakers, with the second speaker rephrasing the first speaker's argument in a way that makes it easier to attack.

Here, the City Council member is not restating an argument made by the Senior Guild, and is not even directly attacking the Senior Guild's position. In fact, the City Council member agrees with the Guild that it deserves the exception. It's for an entirely separate reason, i.e., the fear of an ordinance exception domino effect, external to the Senior Guild's position that the City Council member argues to deny the request.

That being said, I think I know what may have lead you down the straw man path. The City Council member makes the seemingly absurd leap from granting city ordinance exceptions to anarchy in the city, presumably with the requisite "human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!" described in Ghostbusters.

While this is similar to the absurd logical contortions we see in recast straw man arguments, what we have here is a causal conclusion that suffers from a lack of evidence.

Hope this helps.

Ron

[ssangha]

Hey Ron,

Thank you so much for your reply!! It helps a lot!!

[Ron Gore]

You're very welcome. Have a great weekend!

[RENG]

HI,

I also at first had (A), but having both (C) and (E) as contenders switched to (E) because the absurd chain of consequences listed in the argument as seen in (C) is itself based on a nonsensical presumption that the council would be forced to grant undeserving exemptions. WHY? Had the argument said that "before long we will be granting too many exceptions, even though all might be deserved..." then C would definitely be a better answer.

But the council member has no basis for believing that any amount of deserved exceptions should have any bearing on whether some other case was deserving or not. This seems to be a greater flaw.

Thanks

[KelseyWoods]

Hi RENG,

I think I understand what you're saying, but that's why answer choice (C) is the correct answer. The author assumes that if the council grants this one deserved exception, that will cause them to grant many deserved and undeserved exceptions in the future. The idea that it will cause them to grant undeserved exceptions is clearly ridiculous, as you say, but it still fits with answer choice (C) because granting undeserved exceptions is part of that causal sequence of events.

The argument doesn't need to make a distinction between deserved and undeserved exceptions. That distinction would be giving us definitions of what makes a deserved exception and what makes an undeserved exception. But do we really need those definitions? Is the lack of those definitions the flaw? No. As you said, the flaw is assuming that granting a deserved exception is going to set off a chain of events that will cause the council to grant undeserved exceptions.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[student987]

Hello! I have a few questions here.
1) I am a bit confused because I didn't think the stimulus was describing a "causal sequence of events", as stated by (C). I just thought that the argument was that one thing will lead to another, NOT that one thing will CAUSE another. I know this question is probably pretty basic, but could someone help me out?

2) When would the answer choice (E) ("fails to make a needed distinction between") be correct? What flaw is this?

3) This is a minor one, but could anyone explain what an "87% flaw question" (stated by ssangha) means? Thank you!

Hey guys,

Im kind of embarrassed that i have to ask you guys about an 87% flaw question, however i am having trouble understanding why the answer i picked is wrong. I picked A thinking that it was a straw man and the the council member distorted the argument and attacked that argument. I understand why C works as well i am just not sure why the LSAC's answer is better than mine?

Thank You!!

[Ben DiFabbio]

Hello! I have a few questions here.
1) I am a bit confused because I didn't think the stimulus was describing a "causal sequence of events", as stated by (C). I just thought that the argument was that one thing will lead to another, NOT that one thing will CAUSE another. I know this question is probably pretty basic, but could someone help me out?

2) When would the answer choice (E) ("fails to make a needed distinction between") be correct? What flaw is this?

3) This is a minor one, but could anyone explain what an "87% flaw question" (stated by ssangha) means? Thank you!

Hey there!

1) The causal relationship introduced in the argument is from the one exception to the ordinance prohibiting automobiles in municipal parks causing the city council to start granting "all manner of other city ordinances." The city council member is making the unwarranted assumption that waiving one ordinance in this instance is going to lead to them waiving other ordinances, which would cause anarchy in the city. An aside about the distinction you made above: When one thing (A) is said to "lead to" another thing (B), this does imply a causal relationship. A leads to B = A causes B.

2) The issue with answer choice (E) is that it assumes that some of the cascading grants of "all manner of other city ordinances" would be undeserved. Maybe they would all be deserved! We don't know, and it would not affect the argument one way or the other.

3) I may be wrong, but I think the percentage point that ssangha references is the number of test takers who got this question right on test day.

Hope that helps!

- Ben

[owen95]

would this be considered an exception to the rule that we should always consider premises to be true and take them at face value?
I was pretty confident this was a slippery slope fallacy and felt good about going with C, but was just wondering how this plays in with that general rule for the LSAT - because the flaw here seems to mainly be that the premise itself is ridiculous - not necessarily that it connects to the other premises/conclusions in a flawed way.
Thanks!!!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi owen95!

It's good to be paying attention to that argument structure and what we can and cannot accept as true! This is not an exception exactly, but it might illustrate that the general rule that you should accept the premises as true can sometimes be a little more complex than it initially sounds--especially in arguments with a more complex structure.

In this stimulus, and in many with a slippery slope argument, the author is really making a series of conclusions. Work backward in the author's logical chain here. The logical endpoint of the argument is that we should not grant the exception? Why? Because it will create anarchy. Why? Because we'll be granting exceptions to all manner of other city ordinances. Why? Because we granted one exception. The author is making a conclusion at each step here that gets more ridiculous as he goes. A flaw can occur between any premise-intermediate conclusion-main conclusion link.

It also helps to think about the difference between facts and opinions. The difference has a lot to do with context. But a premise that is presented as a fact is indisputable. A premise that is presented as an opinion, however, could be disputed. In a slippery slope argument like this, the author's premises are really mostly opinion since it's difficult to predict the future with any degree of uncertainty anyway.

Ultimately, how strictly you apply the "accept the premises as true" rule is going to depend on the context of the stimulus and the question that you have. While the rule is always technically true, sometimes it is more useful/easy to apply than others. For this one, it sounds like you were able to effectively and easily rely on the context of the argument to lead you to the right answer, without getting too turned around in what exactly the premises were and what statements you needed to accept as true. That's great! As with any "rules" on the LSAT, it's important to be flexible with your thinking as sometimes scenarios can be more complicated than they initially appear.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey