#12 - Dried parsley should never be used in cooking, for it

[nswat001]

Hi,

I originally answered A but changed my answer to B.

My reason for the change was because I realized that in the stimulus, the focus should not be on dried vs fresh but rather on the why - fresh ingredients should be used because they are tastier and healthier than dried ingredients.

Is this also an appropriate way to tackle this question, or was I just lucky?

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Nswat,

Welcome to the forum, and, no, you were not just "lucky." What you did was identify the criterion on which we need to base the principle.

However, if you adjust your approach, you may be able to avoid initially falling for misleading incorrect answer choices. It is important to approach LR problems systematically and generate a "prephrase" (a prediction of what you want the credited response to say or do).

For example, for this problem, start by identifying the conclusion:

• Choose fresh parsley instead of dried parsley for cooking.

Now ask, why should we choose fresh? The author prefers fresh because it's far more tasty and healthful.

Move on the the question task: make a rule to strengthen the author's reasoning. Use your analysis to come up with a prediction. What kind of rule could we follow to know that we should always choose fresh over dried?

Notice that it's not enough just to say "choose fresh over dried." That's redundant and doesn't actually identify the quality of the food that the author prefers.

If you return to your analysis, you noted that the author prefers things that are tasty and healthful. If you wanted a rule to back up the author's conclusion, you could just predict that you want an answer that tells you always to go for the tasty, healthful option.

This is a great prephrase, and with this tool in hand, you'll be able to find the best match for your prediction and avoid falling into trap answer choices.

I hope this helps!

[Oscarg104]

Hey Powerscore fam,

It seems that I eliminated C for a different reason than the one described by the admin. The stimulus says that the reason why dried parsley should never be used is that it is LESS tasty and healthful than fresh parsley, leaving open the possibility that dried parsley may still be tasty. C says "Ingredients that should never be used in cooking are generally NEITHER tasty NOR heathful," which goes further than saying LESS tasty and healthful.

[James Finch]

Hi Oscar,

The relative versus absolute issue comes up multiple times on every LSAT, and always has to be tracked carefully. Here, we have a stimulus that tells us about two types of parsley: fresh is more healthful and tastier than dried. Does this mean that fresh parsley is tasty and healthy (in absolute terms)? Or that dried parsley isn't tasty or healthy? Nope, it only means that we know the relative attributes of dried versus fresh, but that doesn't tell us anything about the absolute states of either. So any answer choice dealing in absolutes isn't going to be helpful. We need something that, like (B), is relative, so that we can combine it with the relative knowledge in the stimulus to help the conclusion.

Hope this helps!

[ShannonOh22]

Complete Question Explanation

Answer choice (A): This is a popular incorrect answer choice because it begins in the right direction, but is not worded quite strongly enough; even if fresh ingredients should be used whenever possible, that would still leave some situations in which dried parsley would be acceptable (when, for example, fresh parsley was not available). Since the author’s conclusion is that dried parsley should never be used in cooking, this principle does not help to justify the author’s absolute conclusion and should be ruled out of contention.

I am confused on the above explanation of why A is incorrect. As is stated throughout multiple posts on the forum, this is a Strengthen - PR question, NOT a Justify question, so the answer choice needed should NOT in fact be worded very "strongly", should it? Strengthen - PR allows for some margin of error - it does not need to be absolute.

B did not seem to be correct, because it lacks "healthful"...is this because in the contrapositive of "tasty and healthful" it becomes "not tasty" OR "not healthful"? And this answer is absolute in nature, which lends itself to a Justify PR Q, not Strengthen PR Q...

Please help! Thanks

[Adam Tyson]

While a Strengthen answer doesn't have to be absolute, ShannonOh22, that doesn't mean it cannot be. After all, if an answer justifies the conclusion, it certainly strengthens it! The issue here with A and B is not that A is not strong enough or that B is too strong. The issue with answer A is that it's positively feeble compared to answer B. So we should use fresh whenever possible - that's great, but what does that have to do with establishing an absolute prohibition on dried? Might the author of answer A say "but when fresh isn't available, it's great to use dried!"? Maybe that helps the conclusion a tiny bit. Maybe.

But answer B is much stronger, strong enough to justify the conclusion as you noted. That doesn't make it a bad answer for a Strengthen question - it makes it a fantastic answer! We are supposed to select the answer that strengthens the most, according to the stem, and what could strengthen this argument more than something that completely perfects it?

In short, when looking at a Strengthen question, there is no such thing as "too strong." Similarly, in a Weaken question, if an answer completely destroys the argument, pick it. While the answer doesn't need to be that strong to qualify, when it is that strong, you should love it.

[johnlongslongjohn]

I have one contention with selecting answer choice B, and was hoping to get some clarity.

I did not select B on the basis that, even if true, it does not eliminate the usage of dried parsley.

The answer says that "only the tastiest ingredients". We only know that dried parsley is not as tasty as fresh parsley... and as I understand it, this alone does not preclude dried parsley from still being among the "tastiest ingredients".

By this standard, I feel it would be insufficient to definitively say that B is the most effective at justifying.

I don't think that my logic has been sufficiently dismantled by this notion of "relative relationships", as has been explained for other answers. As I see it, relative to all of the potential " tastiest ingredients", doesn't this issue persist? Why do we consider the relationship between dried & fresh parsley to be the greatest determinant of relativity?

Can someone help to break my logic here? I don't have any clear answer choice that fits, but B was an immediate first-pass elimination for this reason on both my PT & BR, I feel like I need to get a conceptual grasp of why what I believe is not the case to actually move forward.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi John,

I think you are looking for the wrong type of answer choice here. You are using words like "eliminate" and "preclude" and those words, to me, it looks like your looking for something that would prove the argument instead of just strengthen it. We don't need to help much here, so we don't care that it's something that doesn't completely prove the conclusion.

So let's turn to the facts.

Fact (or premise): Dried parsley is less tasty and healthy than fresh.
Conclusion: Dried parsley should never be used for cooking.

Would it help to know that only the tastiest ingredients should be used? Sure. That would help. We know dried parsley is LESS tasty than fresh. That means it cannot be the tastiest (if there is only one tastiest) and it makes it less likely that it's among the tastiest, because we've already ranked it "far below" fresh.

Hope that helps!