#23 - S: People who are old enough to fight for their

[8scn]

Why is D a beter answer than E? For E, my reasoning is: T says S's arguement is only valid if righting and voting is the same. Then T goes on to show that fighting and voting involve different things, so they're not the same. So I inferred that T doesn't think governments should knowledge 17-year-olds' rights to vote.

For D, what claim does T challenge the truth of? T argues that fighting and voting are different, but S never claimed that they are the same

[Steve Stein]

S argues the following:

Premise: if you're old enough to fight for your country, you're old enough to vote.
Conclusion: the country should allow 17 year olds to vote.

T takes issue, challenging the truth of S's premise that voting and fighting are analagous.

Note, however, that while T basically says that S's logic is limited, T does not assert that 17 year olds should be denied the right to vote (this would be required for answer choice E to hold true).

Let me know if this makes sense--thanks!

~Steve

[PB410]

I'm having trouble understanding the way D is phrased. The use of "challenging" the truth of a claim seemed a bit strong in describing what T was doing. It seems like T is indirectly challenging the first claim by stating how Voting and fighting are different, but it seems like T never directly makes a challenge. I guess it's not the way I would imagine the test to describe the term "challenging". Can someone elaborate on what may fit within the scope of the term challenging on the lsat. As a result I chose E even though I knew T doesn't really argue for a conclusion that 17 year olds should be denied the right to vote.

[Eric Ockert]

First of all, be careful with E. While it is true that T is arguing against the conclusion drawn by S, it is NOT true that T is arguing for an opposite conclusion. T never goes so far as to say that the government should not acknowledge 17 year olds right to vote. This is a subtle, yet important, distinction. It might be fairly likely, were this a real world argument, that T would go on to hold that opposite position. But we don't know that from this argument. So E fails as an answer because it describes something that never actually occurred in the stimulus.

T points out that S's argument is good "only to the extent that fighting and voting are the same kind of activity." Basically, T is pointing out that S's argument is based upon the assumption that fighting and voting are the same (note the use of only here indicating that fact is NECESSARY for S's argument). T then goes on to challenge this assumption, the "claim on which S's conclusion is based."

This is what is so tricky here: S never SAID fighting and voting are the same (at least not explicitly), but S would have to assume the truth of that claim.

Hope that helps!