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- Fri Jan 21, 2011 12:00 am
#23673
Complete Question Explanation
Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (B)
The teacher concludes that journalists who conceal the identity of their sources stake their professional reputations on the "logic of anecdotes," because such sources are removed from precise circumstances, and will only be accepted if the statements are either very plausible or original or are very interesting to a given audience, and those are the properties of a good anecdote.
The student says responds by concluding that the teacher is committed to the idea that the journalist need not bother with sources, because any reasonably resourceful journalist should be able to invent such anecdotal stories faster than they could be gotten from unidentified sources.
The student's response is flawed for several reasons. On the most basic logical level, the student seems to interpret the teacher's remarks through a Mistaken Reversal. The teacher proposed that the necessary condition was to be either plausible, original or interesting, but the student seems to have taken that condition as sufficient. There is no reason to suppose that the teacher does not believe in other necessary conditions-- for instance, the necessary condition that the source is real and external.
The LSAT is most likely to dwell on such logical flaws, so you should focus on that before considering the "gray-area" flaws this stimulus admittedly has .
Answer choice (A): This choice may have been attractive, but since the stimulus did not give you any reason to suppose that anecdotal evidence is a marginal practice, you should not select this choice. When you answer a flaw question, you should focus on the definite logical flaws of a stimulus before you consider responses that reference a specific reality, and you will very infrequently find a correct response that, as does this one, references what is "actually" true.
Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. Perhaps the most obvious additionally necessary condition in which the teacher would believe is that the statements must also have been made by an actual source. This response hits on the fact that the student has erroneously presumed the teacher's criteria to have been proposed as sufficient, when in reality they were probably just a fragment of the conditions the teacher would propose as necessary. Notice that this choice refers to the fact that the student ignores a possibility, rather than asserting anything definite.
Answer choice (C): This response refers to the fact that, given the student's statements, it is quite possible that the student does not understand that the teacher is discussing a source that a journalist does not identify, rather than one that the journalist cannot identify. However, while it is possible that the student has committed such a flaw, you cannot be certain from the student's wording that such a flaw exists, so this response is simply not as supported as is a response that focuses on the student's very definite logical error.
Answer choice (D): This response states that the student applies the teacher's position to the most extreme case to which it would apply, but it is actually unclear that the student has correctly interpreted the teacher's statements in the first place, so this choice is wrong. Furthermore, applying a position to an extreme case in order to determine whether the position holds is actually a very legitimate reasoning technique, so it is not probable that this response would express a flaw.
Answer choice (E): The student does not confuse "and" with "or," so you should not select this response. The student did logically misinterpret the teacher's statements, but the error was one of a complete Mistaken Reversal. In fact, the teacher never proposed that the conditions were required together, only that one of the three was a requirement, so this response does not even correctly describe the teacher's position, and is itself flawed.
Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (B)
The teacher concludes that journalists who conceal the identity of their sources stake their professional reputations on the "logic of anecdotes," because such sources are removed from precise circumstances, and will only be accepted if the statements are either very plausible or original or are very interesting to a given audience, and those are the properties of a good anecdote.
The student says responds by concluding that the teacher is committed to the idea that the journalist need not bother with sources, because any reasonably resourceful journalist should be able to invent such anecdotal stories faster than they could be gotten from unidentified sources.
The student's response is flawed for several reasons. On the most basic logical level, the student seems to interpret the teacher's remarks through a Mistaken Reversal. The teacher proposed that the necessary condition was to be either plausible, original or interesting, but the student seems to have taken that condition as sufficient. There is no reason to suppose that the teacher does not believe in other necessary conditions-- for instance, the necessary condition that the source is real and external.
The LSAT is most likely to dwell on such logical flaws, so you should focus on that before considering the "gray-area" flaws this stimulus admittedly has .
Answer choice (A): This choice may have been attractive, but since the stimulus did not give you any reason to suppose that anecdotal evidence is a marginal practice, you should not select this choice. When you answer a flaw question, you should focus on the definite logical flaws of a stimulus before you consider responses that reference a specific reality, and you will very infrequently find a correct response that, as does this one, references what is "actually" true.
Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. Perhaps the most obvious additionally necessary condition in which the teacher would believe is that the statements must also have been made by an actual source. This response hits on the fact that the student has erroneously presumed the teacher's criteria to have been proposed as sufficient, when in reality they were probably just a fragment of the conditions the teacher would propose as necessary. Notice that this choice refers to the fact that the student ignores a possibility, rather than asserting anything definite.
Answer choice (C): This response refers to the fact that, given the student's statements, it is quite possible that the student does not understand that the teacher is discussing a source that a journalist does not identify, rather than one that the journalist cannot identify. However, while it is possible that the student has committed such a flaw, you cannot be certain from the student's wording that such a flaw exists, so this response is simply not as supported as is a response that focuses on the student's very definite logical error.
Answer choice (D): This response states that the student applies the teacher's position to the most extreme case to which it would apply, but it is actually unclear that the student has correctly interpreted the teacher's statements in the first place, so this choice is wrong. Furthermore, applying a position to an extreme case in order to determine whether the position holds is actually a very legitimate reasoning technique, so it is not probable that this response would express a flaw.
Answer choice (E): The student does not confuse "and" with "or," so you should not select this response. The student did logically misinterpret the teacher's statements, but the error was one of a complete Mistaken Reversal. In fact, the teacher never proposed that the conditions were required together, only that one of the three was a requirement, so this response does not even correctly describe the teacher's position, and is itself flawed.
have properties of a good anecdote