#17 - Concerned citizen: The mayor, an outspoken critic of

[Juan315]

Hi Powerscore,

I ended up choosing A because I thought that was the appeal the author was going for and I didn't see any immediate problems with the word "Afford". Now that I know B is correct, is the ambiguous use of the word afford in its use for monetary considerations by the mayor, and opportunity cost by the author? What makes A totally wrong?

Thanks!

[Paul Marsh]

Hi Juan315! You're definitely right on about the use of "afford" by the mayor. I just Google'd "afford definition", and there's two quick separate definitions that pop up. The first one is "have enough money to pay for". That's pretty clearly what the mayor is talking about. A related but different definition is "to be able to do something without risk of adverse consequences". That seems to be more of what our Concerned Citizen is referring to. So the Citizen is sort of switching definitions of "afford" in the middle of her argument.

In my experience, you can kind of "feel" this sort of Flaw. Something just sort of feels off about how a word is being used in the stimulus. I find myself saying, "Hey, you're being kind of fast and loose with what that word means". This particular Flaw isn't the most common, but when it does show up that's what helps me to identify it.

(A) is incorrect because it would be a mistake to say that the Citizen's argument "solely" relies on emotion. Here's a helpful PowerScore blog post about what a purely emotional argument looks like:

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid-29 ... o-emotion/

Here, the Citizen brings up a new point about the hall being the last relic of the city's founding, and states that preserving history is important for maintaining respect of government. While there are some emotional undertones there, it would be a mistake to say that that's solely an emotional argument.

As a general note - just as with Must be True questions, be careful about very strongly worded answer choices for Flaw questions. Our answer choice needs to accurately describe what (erroneously) happened in the stimulus, so an answer choice with strong language needs a stimulus that was just as strongly mistaken. Not every Flaw answer choice with strong language is wrong, but it's something to be wary of.

Hope that helps!

[Juan315]

Hey Paul this was great! I understand appeal to emotion better. The part on the strength of the answer choice was something I overlooked as well.

Thanks!

[benndur]

Hello,

I had difficulty with this question, and ultimately I picked A incorrectly because while I could see that the argument was not purely emotional,

the answer that "(B) The argument ambiguously uses the word “afford,"

didn't seem correct either. I would argue that the usage was not ambiguous, since contextually its clear she is talking about the societal cost, which she outlines as potential inability to maintain the of respect and authority of the city government.

I feel that for it to be ambiguous, we would have to assume that listeners might be confused which of the two common meanings of the word "afford" she is using, but it's quite clear that she is not talking about monetary costs and is making a sharp/playful attack/zinger against the Mayor's stance of being unable to financially afford the restoration.

Out of context, if the statement itself were standing alone as, "“Can we afford not to?” it would of course be ambiguous, but I feel there is enough context to reasonably and unambiguously understand her meaning.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi benndur,

The ambiguous word flaw can be tricky to spot in this argument.

The way the ambiguous word flaw generally works is that a certain word is used in two different ways within an argument, but the argument treats them as if they were used similarly. In other words, it is not that a discerning reader can't tell which way the particular word is used in each instance; it's that the two uses are not consistent within the argument.

You are absolutely correct that the concerned citizen is not talking about money when asking "Can we afford not to?" The problem/flaw is that the mayor is talking about money when he says "we cannot afford such a luxury item in this time of financial restraint."

When the concerned citizen replies, "I respectfully disagree," that means that the concerned citizen is concluding "we can afford (in the monetary sense) the restoration of city hall." In order to support this conclusion, the citizen would need to show how the city can in fact afford (in the monetary sense) the restoration of city hall, which the citizen fails to do.

In other words, the concerned citizen cannot effectively argue against the mayor's claim that the city doesn't have the money in the budget by arguing the building's historical importance, etc., (at least not without also explaining where the money to restore city hall will come from). The mayor could simply respond, "I agree that City Hall has historical importance, but we literally do not have the money in the budget, so your point is moot."

The concerned citizen's remark may be a "sharp/playful attack/zinger," and it may be very effective in persuading some people. Unfortunately, it does contain a logical flaw, which is what the LSAT tests.

There are several argumentative techniques that may actually be very effective in the real world, but are logically flawed. One great example is the appeal to emotion, which is described in Answer A. Appealing to people's emotions can sometimes be very effective in a persuasive speech, but has no place in logic.

[benndur]

Thank you for the reply Jeff.

I appreciate the explanation on how ambiguous word questions are structured, that is helpful and something I will keep in mind for future questions.

I definitely hear you and agree with how emotional appeals may be effective while flawed, and don't have a place in logical thinking.

With respect to the zinger/playful remark comment, my intention was not to comment on the effectiveness, but only to state that based on the passage, in general a listener would be able to see that they were going for such a comment, and thus that there was enough context that the usage of "afford" in the comment was not ambiguous, since it was relatively clear that it was not referring to the monetary costs.

When the concerned citizen replies, "I respectfully disagree," that means that the concerned citizen is concluding "we can afford (in the monetary sense) the restoration of city hall." In order to support this conclusion, the citizen would need to show how the city can in fact afford (in the monetary sense) the restoration of city hall, which the citizen fails to do.

In other words, the concerned citizen cannot effectively argue against the mayor's claim that the city doesn't have the money in the budget by arguing the building's historical importance, etc., (at least not without also explaining where the money to restore city hall will come from)

I agree that the citizen is concluding that they can afford the restoration in the monetary sense, but I am not sure I agree with the fact that they need to show how they could afford it monetarily (ie: give numbers and figures showing how the budget allows for the expense)?

"We cannot afford such a luxury item in this time of financial restraint he says." => "However, I respectfully disagree"

Based on this sentence, it's possible that they literally cannot even afford to restore the building if they wanted to.
But it is also possible that they can restore the building, and the reason they do not do so is because it is considered a luxury which provides no benefit.

The citizen disagrees on its affordability yes, but it can be unaffordable because they simply don't have the money, or it's because it is a luxury item which the budget provides no room for. Maybe the budget has room for other things which are not considered luxuries.

If the disagreement is that it's affordable because they do have the money, then yes I agree that the citizen would have to show how the city can in fact afford it. But it seems that the citizen is instead challenging the idea that the restoration if the building is a luxury, ("preserving a sense of municipal history is crucial to maintaining respect for our city government and its authority") and in that case in order to support their conclusion they would simply need to put forth an argument for why it would not be a luxury, which they seem to do here?

[Dave Killoran]

I'm going to let Jeff's explanation stand because I think it captures what LSAC is thinking here very accurately.

The point I'll add is that all of our opinions on how "right" this answer is aren't really of consequence. LSAC's opinion is all that matters, and they have indicated this is the flaw they see. To me, that means our job isn't to argue for or against them, but to instead attempt to best understand how they see things. That's what any instructor reply here will attempt to do. Unfortunately, we can't get LSAC on the forum to defend themselves so we're just stuck with trying to divine their intent. That is what will best help you and other students solve future problems.

I wrote a bit more about this concept at: https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/you-ca ... -the-lsat/

Thanks!

[benndur]

Hi Dave, thank you for your reply, and for linking that article. It was pertinent and a good read.

I am definitely not trying to argue that LSAT is wrong, or that a different answer is correct here. I don't think I know better than the LSAT, and It isn't my intention to argue against it. I know they are always right regardless of how it might seem; if it seems otherwise, that is something for me to investigate and try to understand.

I am trying to see where my thinking is wrong. I don't want to be training incorrect thought processes, and in explaining my logic (reasoning why it seems the usage of afford was not ambiguous) I am hoping that the mistake I make is evident and someone more knowledgable than me can point it out.

My PTs are going quite well and there are very few questions like this where I feel strongly that an answer makes little sense (this is the only one I've come across so far). 99.9% of the time I can see that I've overlooked, misread or misunderstood something, but in this case I truly felt there was enough context to understand the citizen's usage of the word "afford" in an unambiguous manner.

I can definitely see now from Jeff's explanation how the correct answer here is exactly the type of ambiguous word flaw that the LSAT expects. Honestly none of the other answers are very close/reasonable. But I still struggle to see where my reasoning is faulty for this question; I ruled out option B because it did not seem ambiguous; while the word is being used differently by the two people with opposing opinions, it's clear one is talking about money and the latter is not.

After reading the stimulus, I predicted that the flaw would be related to the inability/failure of the citizen to provide evidence for or to quantify their claim that the building is, "crucial to maintaining respect for [the] city government and its authority". This is because there's no proof that that claim is true, and even if it were true, unless she can ascribe a monetary value the authority and respect the building affords (no pun intended), it still would not be affordable.

Hence I originally selected A, since an argument without factual basis seems emotional. Of course even then it did not feel like a strong answer at all since it said, "solely" and the citizen provided some reasoning which seemed logical (building crucial for maintaining the respect and authority of the city --> therefore not a luxury --> therefore affordable"). Again, after Jeff's explanation about ambiguous word flaws (very helpful), I definitely feel less likely to make this kind of mistake in the future, but I still find it difficult to reconcile my feeling that the usage was unambiguous with the correct answer.

In a situation where I couldn't rule out the other four answers as easily as in this question, and perhaps there was another strong answer I think I would still struggle. For example, if option A were modified to be a more attractive answer (maybe something like, "The argument contains an emotional appeal to history").

In any case, I hope my posts haven't come across as needless argumentation or me trying to fight the test, but if has that is my fault and I apologize. I certainly would never dare presume to know better than the LSAC, and I am grateful for the time you guys take to help people with their questions. It seems that the take away from this thread for me is that the threshold for something to be considered unambiguous is much higher than what I would expect, and to keep that in mind for ambiguous word flaw questions/answers. Thanks.