#21 - Sociologist: The more technologically advanced a

[Jkjones3789]

Hello, so I just wanted to make sure that in this question the first sentence is the conclusion. I was running out of time and identified it as the conclusion so I went with A. Is A wrong because that premise stated isn't the one supporting it and its rather the second sentence that is supporting the conclusion in the first sentence?

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, Jkjones,

You are correct - the first sentence is indeed the conclusion. Well done!

Answer choice A is wrong because the statement is not a conclusion, it is a premise supporting the conclusion in the first sentence. So you are correct about that as well. Shame about running out of time, though - better luck next time!

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

[mN2mmvf]

Hi Lucas,

Why can't (A) be a subsidiary conclusion, supported by the statement that "people realize that sophisticated technologies deeply affect the quality of human relationships," which then supports the main conclusion that "the more technologically advanced a society is, the more marked its members' resistance to technological innovations"?

I've asked elsewhere on this forum whether the phrase "a conclusion" alone can refer to a subsidiary conclusion, and the response was that it could.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Let's see if that works here, mN2mmvf, by pulling just those two sentences out of the argument to see if they make a coherent argument on their own:

Premise: people realize that sophisticated technologies deeply affect the quality of human relations

Conclusion: the more technologically advanced a society is, the more aware its members are of technology's drawbacks

I'm not seeing the connection here. How does realizing that tech affects quality lead to the direct proportional claim about drawbacks? If this was presented to you all by itself as an LR stimulus, would you think this was a good argument, or would you say that the evidence has no bearing on the conclusion? I would lean towards the latter.

Perhaps equally important to your analysis here, though, is that the statement in question is most definitely a premise, introduced by the word "because", which supports the main conclusion. That is its primary function, and so we need to include a description of that function in our answer about what role it plays.

On the LSAT, answer choices that describe intermediate or subordinate conclusions will almost always talk about both roles played by that statement. They will say things like "it is a conclusion supported by another claim, and which in turn supports the main conclusion" or "it is a conclusion of the argument, but not the main conclusion" or "it receives support from one claim and supports another", etc. That pattern is fairly consistent on the LSAT. While it might be possible for an answer describing a subordinate conclusion to mention only the conclusion aspect of the claim, without mentioning the premise aspect (I don't recall ever seeing one like that, but I'll concede that it may have happened), for that to be a correct answer there would have to be no other answer that also described its role as a premise. Here, answer B describes that other role, and since there cannot be two equally correct answers to an LSAT question (the "uniqueness principle" of answers), one of them must be incorrect. The premise role is obvious; the subordinate conclusion role, if it exists, is very subtle. The premise answer is better, and thus is the credited response.

I hope that helps with your attack on future Method-AP questions like this one!

[mN2mmvf]

Thanks Adam. I agree that's the better choice. And thanks for pointing out that patten about how the test describes subordinate conclusions; I've seen that formulation many times but never really noticed that it seems to always explicitly describe the dual roles. Very helpful tip!

[rgold3]

Hello,
Can you please explain the difference between B and C? I understand that it is a premise but do not understand the difference between these two!
Thanks,
Rachel

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there Rachel! The problem with answer C is that it brings up a claim that isn't anywhere in the stimulus. The premise in question isn't used to support a claim about the extremely poor quality of human relations, because there is no such claim being made! We know that technology deeply affects the quality of human relations, but not what that effect is or how extreme is may get. So, while C gets right the part about it being a premise, the rest of the answer goes off the rails in bringing up outside information. These questions are part of the Prove family, with all the info you need found in the stimulus and all outside info being, at best, suspect. Reject any answer that requires info from beyond the scope of the stimulus!