#17 - Human beings can exhibit complex, goal-oriented

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi angel,

I'm not 100% sure what resources you have at your disposal, but you need to be looking for Assumption and Justify the Conclusion questions that involve Conditional Reasoning. If you're a FL LSAT course student, you can find such questions in the homework of Lessons 4 and 5. If you have the Question Type Training collections, look for them under the chapter that includes stimuli containing Conditional Reasoning.

Off the top of my head, the following Assumption questions have the features you are asking about:

October 2008 LR1 Section I, Q12
October 2008 LR2 Section III, Q24
October 2004 LR2 Section IV, Q7
June 2001 LR2 Section III, Q5
June 1999 LR1 Section I, Q2
October 2005 LR1 Section I, Q20
December 2003 LR2 Section IV, Q19
October 2002 LR1 Section I, Q12
October 2001 LR1 Section I, Q14
June 2000 LR2 Section III, Q11

Keep in mind, also, that the majority of Justify questions also contain Conditional Reasoning (the frequency of occurrence is higher than in Assumption questions), so you should definitely study those as well!

Good luck!

[mariahenain]

While I figured out this question conditionally, in a very mechanistic way similar to JTC, I am just unclear as to why "nonhumman animals" is not the "rogue" term to connect to complex, goal-oriented behavior, but intelligence is. This may be a silly question, but this is what I prephrased before tackling the question to find the answer choices all had intelligence in them.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi mariahenain,

Good question! To this issue of why one, rather than the other, is considered the "rogue" element, note that this question stem asks, "Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?" Thus, it could be the case that there are additional assumptions that the argument makes, beyond the assumption in the right answer choice. So there might be assumptions about the element "nonhuman animals," even though the right answer choice is focusing on a different assumption about intelligence.

Hope that helps!

[lilmissunshine]

Hello,

I read through the threads but still don't fully understand it. Without diagramming, I thought the answer was clearly (A), because it connected the two elements of "complex behavior" and "intelligence". But after I diagrammed it, I think (A) is Mistaken Reversal.

Premise: Complex Behavior Conscious

Conclusion: Intelligent Conscious

I think the assumption should be I CB instead of CB I, as states in answer choice (A).

Could you further explain it for me? Thanks a lot!

[Adam Tyson]

I'm going to refer you to Jon's explanation a little earlier in this thread, where he talks about NOT diagramming the stimulus but merely using the mechanistic approach to link the two rogue elements in the argument to get a prephrase. Only answer A makes that link.

Further, since this is an Assumption question, we can try the Negation Technique. If complex, goal-oriented behavior does NOT require intelligence, then even though that complex behavior may not indicate consciousness, intelligence still could. Once intelligence is decoupled from complex behavior, the premise simply doesn't do anything to connect to the conclusion!

If the answer had instead said, as you suggested, "Intelligence requires complex behavior", and we were to negate that, we would get "intelligence does not require complex behavior". That is, intelligence could exist even in the absence of complex behavior. Would that ruin the argument by again decoupling those two ideas? I think so! As Jon said, that could also work, although the more typical answer on this test will have the condition that's new in the conclusion be the necessary condition.

They point is to pick the only answer that connects the two rogue concepts. If there was more than one that did so, then we would have to dive further into how they differ and what that difference means for us. Here, with only one answer choice doing the job, we don;t even have to worry about that, so let's not!

[HowardQ]

Hi,

I have arrived at the correct answer simply by ruling out the alternatives since only A contains the missing chains. But the relationship between the 2 chains was not what I expected, I chose it due to time constraint. Later I found that answer A is not the full assumption, but about half of the assumption. The purpose is to connect complex behavior with intelligence, with a kind of connection, the answer only exhibited half of that. Never the less, it must be true. I am not happy with the "the argument depends" phrase in the question stem, which I interpret as demanding a full assumption. In this case could any assumption that addresses the missing part and must be true enough for a correct answer, even if it's not complete?

Thanks

[Adam Tyson]

That's correct, HowardQ, the answer could be ANY assumption required by the argument. The language you got hung up on, "depends," does not mean that you must find everything that the argument depends on, but only something that it depends on.

"Every red-blooded American male dreams of owning a Harley, so that is obviously one of my dreams."

This argument depends on the assumption that I am re-blooded.

This argument depends on the assumption that I am American.

This argument depends on the assumption that I am male.

None of these answers by itself justifies the conclusion, but each of them is a necessary assumption of the argument. If any of them were false, the conclusion would no longer be supported and the argument falls apart.

Use that mechanistic approach, and trust it! Nice job!

[lsatprep1215]

Hi, I answered this question correctly but I still have something in my mind. When I was doing this question I found two flaws in the stimulus, the first one is the author did not explained intelligence is complex behavior, the second flaw is the author did not explain human non human animals. I originally was looking for an answer choice that will explain human in some ways are at least the same as nonhuman animals, I did not find what i want so I ended up choosing A as my answer. But even if A is true, the argument still contains a flaw, human and nonhuman animals are not the same, maybe nonhuman animals must have conscious awareness in order to preform complex, goal-oriented behavior? Can someone explain?

[Adam Tyson]

First off, lsatprep1215, the question is an Assumption question and not a Flaw question, so don't get too focused on either the flaws or the elimination of those flaws! However, Flaws are generally based on bad assumptions, and Assumption answers are frequently about eliminating flaws ("Defender Assumptions"), so identifying one or more flaws can certainly help you form one or two prephrases!

This argument has a couple flaws in it for sure, as discussed earlier in this thread, and perhaps the humans to non-humans issue is one. I'm not so sure it is, though, because the author is not saying "X is true of humans so it must be true of non-humans." Instead, the author is saying "In humans, X does not require Y, so in non-humans Z might not prove Y." It's the element of "might not" that saves that last claim, which in this argument is expressed with the term "will not establish" (won't be enough, by itself, to prove) something. The author is saying more information would be required before we could draw any conclusions. That's actually a pretty decent argument, if you ask me.

The important thing here is to recognize that the assumptions do not have to completely fix all the problems in the argument. This isn't a Justify the Conclusion question, either, so we aren't setting out to prove the conclusion is true, but rather to prove that the answer choice must be true if the argument is to make sense. See my example about dreaming of a Harley earlier in this thread for more on that idea!

The short answer: the correct answer to an Assumption question does not have to fix all the flaws or prove the conclusion is true. It only has to be something that, if the argument is valid, must also be true.

[Albertlyu]

thank you all for sharing, it is such a good explanation!

Evidence: Complex Doesn't indicate consciousness
therefore:
Conclusion: Intelligence Doesn't indicate consciousness

So the author must be assuming Complex includes intelligence, I was not sure who includes whom, but the reverse cannot be right, if Intelligence includes "complex", it may include something else which certainly does not follow the evidence.