#20 - Some people believe that good health is due to

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning—Cause and Effect. The correct answer choice is (D)

The argument contains a causal conclusion that asserts that good health is primarily caused by
informed lifestyle choices (education):

     Premise: Some people believe that good health is due to luck.

     Premise: However, studies from many countries indicate a strong correlation between
     good health and high educational levels.

     Conclusion: Thus research supports the view that good health is largely the result of
     making informed lifestyle choices.
     The author errs in assuming that the correlation mentioned in the second premise supports a causal
     conclusion.

Answer choice (A): A disproportionate number of people (about one in three) select this answer.
Does the argument presume that to make an informed lifestyle choice a person must be highly
educated? The author certainly believes that high educational levels lead to informed choices, but the
answer suggests that the author thinks that the highly educated are the only people able to make an
informed choice. The wording is too strong and this answer is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): The author specifically notes that good health is largely the result of making
informed lifestyle choices. There is no mention of poor health, nor need there be since the argument
focuses on a correlation between good health and education. Thus, overlooking the possibility
mentioned in this answer choice is not an error.

Answer choice (C): The author does not make the presumption that informed lifestyle choices are
available to everyone, just that making good choices generally results in good health.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer. Remember, the error of causality is one with many
facets, and one of those errors is assuming that no third element caused both the stated cause and the
stated effect. This answer choice indicates that a third element (such as money) could cause both the
conditions described in the argument. Remember, if you know an error of causality occurred in the
stimulus, look for the answer that uses the words cause or effect! This is the only answer to do so,
and it is correct.

Answer choice (E): Unlike many causal conclusions, the conclusion in this argument is not ironclad.
The author specifically says that the effect is largely the result of the cause, and that statement
implicitly allows other causes to lead to the effect, even if one does not make an informed lifestyle
choice.

[curiosity]

Can you please go through answer choices A, B and E and explain why they are wrong? And also, why D is the correct answer choice?

Thank you.

[David Boyle]

Can you please go through answer choices A, B and E and explain why they are wrong? And also, why D is the correct answer choice?

Thank you.

Hello curiosity,

Answer A means something like, "lifestyle choices --> highly educated". However, this does not connect to the idea of health.

Answer B brings in inherited diseases, which is somewhat tangential. (E.g., even if you inherited a disease, you could keep it under control and be in good health)

The stimulus says, "Thus research supports the view that good health is largely the result of making informed lifestyle choices", which, because of the word "largely", does not make it a problem that, as answer E says, that the argument "does not acknowledge that some people who fail to make informed lifestyle choices are in good health".

Answer D, "overlooks the possibility that the same thing may causally contribute both to education and to good health", is right because it acknowledges that it may not be lifestyle choices/education that cause good health, but that some other (unnamed) cause may result in education and good health.

Hope that helps,
David

[curiosity]

Thank you, that makes sense!

Can you expand upon why A is wrong? There does seem to be a false equivalency between high education levels and the ability to make informed lifestyle choices.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi curiosity,

As David noted about (A), it represents the following:

informed lifestyle choices highly educated people

The reason (A) isn't correct is signaled by the word "only" in the answer choice. It is saying that informed lifestyle choices are only made by highly educated people, but this isn't something the stimulus assumes.

Rather, it states that there's a positive correlation between good health and high education, and then connects good health to a new variable--"informed lifestyle choices" in the last sentence. That connection is a problem with the stimulus--it is unclear what the relation between high education and "informed lifestyle choices" is, so we don't know that to be a flaw.

But while one may find many instances of good health and high education occurring simultaneously, this does not show which caused the other. This is why (D) is the best choice, since it suggests they may both be effects of a some other cause.

[bk1111]

Hi curiosity,

As David noted about (A), it represents the following:

informed lifestyle choices highly educated people

The reason (A) isn't correct is signaled by the word "only" in the answer choice. It is saying that informed lifestyle choices are only made by highly educated people, but this isn't something the stimulus assumes.

Rather, it states that there's a positive correlation between good health and high education, and then connects good health to a new variable--"informed lifestyle choices" in the last sentence. That connection is a problem with the stimulus--it is unclear what the relation between high education and "informed lifestyle choices" is, so we don't know that to be a flaw.

But while one may find many instances of good health and high education occurring simultaneously, this does not show which caused the other. This is why (D) is the best choice, since it suggests they may both be effects of a some other cause.

So, does this mean the author is equivocating between the idea of "highly educated" and "informed lifestyle choices" ?

I do not really understand how answer choice D accounts for the idea of "informed lifestyle choices" ...even if a third factor is contributing to the both education and good health ...what does that have to do with the causal conclusion of informed lifestyle choices resulting in good health?

I hope I am making sense....

[Adam Tyson]

You are indeed making sense, bk1111, but you may be on the wrong track here. The author argues that because two things are strongly correlated that one of them (education) causes the other (good health). Yes, there is a presumption that there is a further correlation between high education and informed lifestyle choices, and that too may be a flaw, but when we have such obvious and powerful causal reasoning present, your first, best approach will usually be to focus on that causality and attack it with your usual causal tools.

Perhaps luck is the cause of both good health and high education? Lucky people get it all! That's a great "alternate cause" argument against the original causal claim. So would looking at wealth, or genetics, or political power, or magic for that matter - if anything other than lifestyle choices contributes to good health, you've weakened the causal claim.

If we didn't have an answer like D here, then I would be focusing on that potentially false equivalence between education and informed choices. For example, I would like an answer that said something like "presumes, without justification, that there is a strong positive correlation between high education levels and making informed lifestyle choices." Answer A is attractive for having connected those two ideas, but is ultimately wrong because 1) the "only" wasn't assumed, 2) the "only" makes high education necessary rather than sufficient, and 3) because this is a causal argument and not a conditional one, so conditional answers are almost certainly incorrect.

When causal reasoning is at the core of the argument, stick with that. It's easier to deal with and prone to errors, so there's gold to be found by mining for a causal answer.

Keep up the good work!

[Kallistatiefling]

Hi Adam,

I got this answer correct and I understand what the question was getting at, but the phrasing "is largely the result of" brought up a few curiosities.

In regards to option (B), you stated, "the "only" makes high education necessary rather than sufficient". Since the author equates 'informed lifestyle choices' with 'high educational levels', is it correct that you believe 'informed lifestyle choices' to be a sufficient causal condition in the conclusion "Good health is largely the result of informed lifestyle choices"? If so....

The answer to choice (B) draws an equivalence between "suffering from inherited diseases" and "poor health". Given that equivalence, (B) can be diagrammed as "informed lifestyle choices" -> "(NOT) good health". Since this is a common-sense assumption the LSAC expects us to know, my understanding is that it can be taken to be true. If accepted as true, it contradicts "high education levels" as a sufficient condition in the author's conclusion... implying that the author must have overlooked it.

Can you help identify where I'm going wrong?

Thank you.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Kallistatiefling,

It's best not to infer that the causal element of this cause/effect conclusion (informed lifestyle choice) is a sufficient condition here, because the conclusion in the stimulus uses the language "largely" to convey merely that there is a significant causal relationship between informed lifestyle choices and good health. That term "largely" muddies the waters: a person might still be in bad health while making informed lifestyle choices, because the other factors that contribute to health might (in a certain circumstance) override the informed lifestyle choices a person makes.

Since the author does not imply a conditional relationship between the cause/effect elements of the conclusion, the "overlooked possibility" in answer choice B cannot damage that conclusion.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[pca99095]

I understand why (A) is wrong but the following explanation in Powerscore Logical Reasoning Bible confuses me. According to such bible, it says that in real world, a given cause can be just one possible cause of the effect. However, when LSAT speaker say that one caused another, this means that this is the only cause of the effect.

So if we apply such rule to this question, since high education is the cause of lifestyle choices, it must be that high education is the only cause. But while answer (a) is wrong, does this mean the Powerscore's cause and effect explanation is wrong? Howe should I understand such explanation with this question?