#15 - Lucien: Public-housing advocates claim that the many

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Method of Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (B)

This question asks you to describe Maria's method of reasoning, so you should focus on the fact that she introduces evidence that attacks Lucien's proposed cause. As a note, it may have been easier to do this question first.

Answer choice (A): Lucien uses his personal experience to comment on apartment vacancies, but it is not clear that his assumption that the homeless do not work is anything more than conjecture, so this choice inadequately describes Maria's response, and is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. In order for Lucien to conclude that an unwillingness or inability to work is the sole cause of homelessness, Lucien must assume that no homeless people have employment. When Maria points out that many homeless people have jobs, she attacks Lucien's assumption, or presupposition, that there is any basis for his causal conclusion that joblessness is the sole cause of homelessness.

Answer choice (C): Maria does not engage in a character attack or any attack on motive; she simply points out that the facts run contrary to Lucien's assumptions, so this choice is wrong.

Answer choice (D): Maria does not demonstrate that Lucien's evidence supports any conclusion, she merely shows that no available evidence could support the causal relationship Lucien proposes. Effectively, she does not address Lucien's evidence directly, so this choice is wrong.

Answer choice (E): Maria offers no alternative explanation, she simply points out that Lucien's causal conclusion must be incorrect because it does not match reality. This choice is wrong.

[madelineunruh01]

It was difficult for me to tease out Lucien's conclusion in this stimulus, which led me to get the question wrong. I ultimately decided the last sentence was the conclusion, which led me to choose answer choice D- since I thought the last sentence was the conclusion rather than a premise. How did you decide which sentence was the conclusion?

[Robert Carroll]

madelineunruh,

Lucien's conclusion is his second sentence. He's trying to show that other people are wrong, basically. The rest of the stimulus does the job of trying to prove that. I think it's helpful in situations like this, where's there's an intermediate conclusion AND the main conclusion, to try to "force" indicators onto each. So, our two conclusions are the second sentence and the last sentence. Which makes more sense of Lucien's argument?

Because the conclusion of the public advocates is absurd, therefore homelessness can only be caused by people's inability or unwillingness to work.

OR ELSE

Because homelessness can only be caused by people's inability or unwillingness to work, therefore the conclusion of the public-housing advocates is absurd.

The latter makes sense. The advocates are wrong BECAUSE something else is causing homelessness. Since that construction makes sense of the argument, and that construction forces the conclusion indicator on the second sentence, that confirms that the second sentence is the main conclusion.

Robert Carroll

[tkkim7]

Does presupposition always mean implicit assumptions, as in this question, or can it simply mean premises in other contexts?

Thanks.

[Robert Carroll]

tkkim7,

I've not seen an example of a presupposition on the LSAT being an explicit premise, but I don't think it's impossible. Certainly arguments have sometimes been described by the test makers as involving "explicit assumptions". Since a presupposition is a kind of assumption, it seems possible it could be explicitly stated, though, as with any assumption, I think it's much more likely to be implicit in any given case.

Robert Carroll

[alex.r.berson@gmail.com]

Hi there,

I'm having trouble figuring out how the "presupposition" mentioned in the AC isn't explicitly stated. To me, it's very explicitly stated - "homelessness can, therefore, only be caused by people's inability or unwillingness to work to pay the rent."

I chose (C) for this reason - I thought since it's so obvious the angle Lucien is taking, it can't be a presupposition.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi alex,

Assumptions (or presuppositions) can sometimes seem so obvious to us that they are easy to miss.

If you look very carefully, no where in Lucien's argument is it actually established that homeless people do not work. The only place in Lucien's argument where not working is mentioned is in the intermediate conclusion, in which Lucien concludes that the only cause of homelessness is people not working. However, that conclusion relies on the assumption that these homeless people are, in fact, not working.

If we were to ask Lucien, "do the homeless people who you refer to in your argument work," then he would respond "no." This is necessary for his argument. If it turns out that a significant percentage of homeless do work regularly, as Maria points out, Lucien's argument falls apart.

Here a similar argument as an example.

"There is no air pollution in the area where these people live who have lung cancer. Therefore, smoking cigarettes caused their lung cancer."

In this argument, I'm assuming that these people do in fact smoke cigarettes, even though I haven't actually established this fact. If they don't smoke cigarettes, then the argument falls apart. (Let's ignore second-hand smoke for simplicity.)

As for Answer C, the problem is that Lucien's motives are not called into question by Maria or even mentioned at all, only his mistaken assumption that homeless people don't work.