#15 - Speaker: Like many contemporary critics, Smith

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion, SN. The correct answer choice is (B)

In this challenging stimulus, the speaker opens by recounting Smith’s argument: the true meaning
of an author’s statements can only be understood through insight into the social circumstances of
the author. This conditional statement, that full understanding requires such insight, dictates that
in this case the sufficient condition is “full understanding of an author’s true meaning,” and the
necessary condition is “insight into the author’s social circumstances.” This conditional relationship
is diagrammed below, followed by the statement’s contrapositive:

Statement: Understand author’s true meaning Insight into author’s social circumstance

Contrapositive: Insight into author’s circumstance Can understand author’s true meaning

The speaker then jumps to the conclusion that if we have insight into Smith’s circumstances, then we
should, to some extent, understand the true meaning of Smith’s words

(Insight into Smith’s social circumstance understand true meaning of Smith’s words).

In the final sentence, the speaker asserts this all points to the conclusion that Smith herself is not
aware of the true meaning of Smith’s own words. Putting this together with the contrapositive
diagrammed above, we can arrive at the following:

Premise: Insight into author’s circumstance Can understand author’s true meaning

Conclusion: Smith Can understand author’s (her) true meaning

Because this is a Justify question, we can solve this question mechanistically by examining the
“rogue” elements in the argument. As is clear from the two diagrams above, the rogue elements
that must be linked to justify the speaker’s conclusion are “Smith” and “no insight into author’s
circumstance.” In other words, the speaker must be presuming that Smith has no insight into Smith’s
social circumstances.

Answer choice (A): The speaker does not discuss the subject of understanding the author’s intended
meaning, only the true meaning of the author’s words, which require insight into the author’s social
circumstances. Since the intended meaning does is not a part of the stimulus, it cannot be one of the
rogue elements that we need to link, and this answer choice cannot be correct.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice, and the one that is prephrased in the
discussion above. If Smith lacks insight into her own social circumstance, then the speaker is
justified in the conclusion that Smith cannot truly understand the meaning of her own words.

Answer choice (C): Even if it is Smith’s intent for her work to have only one meaning, this would
not justify the speaker’s conclusion that Smith herself is not aware of the true meaning of her own
words. Since this choice fails to justify the speaker’s conclusion, this cannot the correct answer
choice.

Answer choice (D): The speaker does not criticize Smith’s theory as lacking insight, but instead
criticizes Smith herself as such. This statement would not justify the speaker’s conclusion that Smith
is unaware of her own words—in fact, this answer choice would weaken the speaker’s conclusion,
which is based on Smith’s theory.

Answer choice (E): The author’s intent is not discussed by the speaker, nor is the question of whether
such evidence can tell us the true meaning of the work. In any case, this answer choice does not
align with the prephrased answer in the discussion above, nor does it justify the speaker’s conclusion
regarding Smith’s lack of awareness of the true meaning of her own words.

[mmclaughlin]

Hi,

Q15 confuses me. I know why A and E are bad answers, but at face-value B doesn't seem necessarily better than C. Can someone please explain why B is correct? (Without using the negation technique-- that makes it a little easier to solve, but takes more time on test day).

Thanks,
M

[Ron Gore]

Hi mmclaughlin,

Your question raises a few issues. First, you may be confused because you have incorrectly concluded that this is an Assumption question. It is not an Assumption question, but rather a Justify the Conclusion question. You can tell the difference by the respective roles assigned by the question stem to the stimulus and to the answer choices. In this case, the stimulus says the conclusion follows logically IF the correct answer choice is assumed. That language places the answer choice in the role of the sufficient condition, making this a Justify the Conclusion question.

Now on to the argument, which is conditional. The rule that Smith advocates is that if you are to understand the true meaning of an author's statements, then you must do so through insight into the author's social circumstances. We could diagram this rule as:

UTM = understand the true meaning of an author's statements
ASM = insight into the author's social circumstances

Sufficient Necessary

UTM ASM

The argument eventually states that this rule suggests that Smith herself is not aware of the meaning of her own words. In the context of the diagram above, this statement would be UTMSmith, implying the invocation of the rule's contrapositive.

Since this is a Justify the Conclusion question, the correct answer choice will prove the conclusion, in this case that Smith herself is not aware of the meaning of her own words, is valid. To do this, the correct answer choice will explicitly provide the sufficient condition of the contrapositive in the context of Smith, i.e., that Smith does not have insight into the author's social circumstances (ASMSmith). Since Smith is the author at issue, then Smith does not have insight into her own social circumstances, producing the diagram:

ASMSmith UTMSmith.

Answer choice states the sufficient condition of this relationship, that Smith does not have insight into her own social circumstances.

Lastly, I would encourage you to continue to practice using the Assumption Negation technique. There are very few opportunities on the LSAT to confirm your work. Assumption questions, which on average comprise 12 to 15 percent of the questions in each Logical Reasoning sections, are one of those few opportunities, but only if you use the Assumption Negation technique.

Thanks,

Ron

[eober]

Hi,

Would someone be able to explain how they approached the question before going to answer choices? How do we understand that she lacks insight into her own social circumstances? I got very confused when reading the stimulus, would you recommend breaking the stimulus into parts when you don't understand the argument clearly? Or is there something else I can do?

She says that the meaning of what author says can be understood when you think about their social circumstances.
If we think of Smith's circumstances we should be able to understand what Smith means by this.
This suggests that Smith is not aware of what her words truly mean.

I don't really understand how the speaker comes to this conclusion. How can we say that lacking insight to own circumstances means that one is not aware of the true meaning of their words?

Any clarification would help! Thanks

[Jkjones3789]

Hello, I need a little help with this Justify Question. I identified the last sentence as the conclusion but I am a little uncertain about the meaning of the second sentence and what it has to do with the argument as a whole. Thank you.

[Adam Tyson]

In this Justify the Conclusion question, we need to find an answer choice that fills the missing link between the premises (which we accept without question as being true - that's the way the LSAT works) and the conclusion (which is typically suspect, and in Justify questions there is always a missing link).

Cutting away all the distractions and fluff in the stimulus, there is really just one premise: You can only understand a writers words if you have insight into their social circumstances. That, by the way, is conditional - U (understand) -> I (insight)

From that one premise, the author concludes that Smith doesn't understand - that is, U. How do we prove that? With the contrapositive - I -> U. So, if it's true that Smith lacks insight, then based on the conditional premise that we accept without question, it must be true that she lacks understanding.

The key here is understanding that we are not looking for something that must be true, but rather we are looking for something that, if it IS true, forces the conclusion to also be true. It proves, or justifies, the conclusion.

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Jkjones,

The second sentence is just establishing that, if the argument Smith makes is true for all authors, it should be true for Smith, as well. The conclusion then tells us the result of applying the argument to Smith's statements, and in order to justify that conclusion, we need something telling us that Smith doesn't have insight into her social circumstances.