#10 - Concept Reference, Weaken

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (A).

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[lathlee]

According to the Powerscore answer sheet says line 20-30 contains the relevant information to answer this question. I cannot find how A) would weaken

also, A) the western church boards that sent the greatest number of single women missionaries abroad had not received any financial support from women's auxiliary groups. ... of course, the western church should or better receive any financial support from women's auxiliary groups... I do not understand how this info weakens the increasing number of single women missionaries sent abroad beginning in the 1870s?

[Adam Tyson]

To weaken the argument for why more single women were sent on mission work in the 1870's, first you have to find that argument. There's a lot of support leading up to it, all about money and who controlled it, but start at line 25:

But as women's groups began raising impressive amounts of money donated specifically in support of single women missionaries, the home churches bowed both to women's changing roles at home and to increasing numbers of single professional missionary women abroad.

The argument for the increase in single women missionaries is that the women's groups raised a lot of money, and that money was influential. Money was the cause.

To weaken that claim, you should prephrase something about the money not being the cause. Look for an alternate cause (some other reason for the increase), the cause without the effect (in an earlier era or another location, women's groups raised a lot of money but the churches still didn't send single women), the effect without the cause (somewhere or sometime else, single women were sent even when they did not have a lot of financial influence), a reversed cause and effect (the money wasn't raised until after the church sent a lot of single women missionaries), or a problem with the data (not sure what that would look like here, honestly, but basically the author just got the facts wrong).

Answer A gives us the effect without the cause. If some churches were sending a lot of single women missionaries but not getting any money from those women's groups, then the money could not have been the cause of the increase, and the argument is weakened.

Did you have another contender in mind? Does that make sense to you now? This should work just like a causal argument in Logical Reasoning. Use those same tools.

[deck1134]

Hello,

I am curious about this question. I had worked it and eliminated all except A and D.

From my perspective, there was nothing in the passage that implied that women's auxiliary groups had to be the ones to give funding. Isn't it true that any group could have given funding--i.e. the "Western church boards" could have received funding from any groups to send the women over? Would not receiving women's funding really matter?

D seemed compelling because the author implies that the funds from women's groups mattered in sending women. If it was in fact a history of local service that compelled the board to allow missionaries, wouldn't that weaken the argument "more" than A would? If A claims that funding changes did not influence, and D claims that other factors could, how can we fairly adjudicate this question?

I get frustrated on these--there is usually 1 per LSAT reading comprehension passage--that legitimately seems like a coin toss. I'm not sure what I can do to improve my performance here. Any suggestions?

[Adam Tyson]

The purported cause given in the passage is pressure from women's groups in the form of impressive amounts of money, Deck. Even if some churches sent single women missionaries because they got pressure from other groups instead of women's groups, that would still weaken this claim! ANY alternate cause, other than pressure in the form of money from those groups would weaken the argument.

I don't think your reading of answer D is entirely accurate here. This answer isn't saying that churches had routinely sent single women missionaries prior to being pressured to do so. That would deny the truth of the premises in the argument, something we rarely see on this test. Rather, what it is saying is that once they were pressured to sent missionaries, the ones they chose to send were ones who had been active in local parish work. Telling us more about who they sent doesn't do anything to weaken the claim about why they sent them in the first place. In any event, the facts in the passage do not say that the churches never sent single women missionaries before being pressured by women's groups, but only that they had been uneasy about doing so, and presumably did so only rarely, if ever. So, they could have sent some of those women before being pressured, but it was after the pressure was applied that they increased the number.

I hope that helps clear this one up!

[sdb606]

For A to be correct, all missionaries would have to be sent by churches. This way, funding from groups that insist churches send more women physicians could indeed account for the increase in women physicians.

But I eliminated A because I was confused about who is sending missionaries. I thought "women's foreign mission societies" were the ones sending missionaries in addition to churches. So I eliminated A because I didn't think churches needed to take money from women's auxiliary groups. So the fact that churches did not take money would not weaken the argument.

But as women's groups began raising impressive amounts of money donated specifically in support of single women missionaries, the home churches bowed both to women's changing roles at home and to increasing numbers of single professional missionary women abroad.

I read this quote as indicating that women's auxiliary groups began sending women physicians before churches and this popular pressure compelled the churches to also send women physicians.

Is there anything in the passage to indicate that only churches sent missionaries?

[Adam Tyson]

Did you consider the impact of these lines from the first paragraph, sdb606?:

Before the formation of these women's organizations, mission funds had been collected by ministers and other church leaders, most of whom emphasized local parish work. What money was spent on foreign missions was under the control of exclusively male foreign mission boards whose members were uniformly uneasy about the new idea of sending single women out into the mission field.

While there may have been some missionaries sent by other groups, this section suggests otherwise, and at a minimum means that the vast majority of missionaries were sent exclusively by these mission boards.

We are supposed to weaken the argument that the reason more single women were sent after the formation of the women's groups was that the money they controlled was very influential. Answer A undermines those claims because it means that the men in charge of the money at those church boards were not being influenced by the pressure of women's groups wielding large amounts of money. The effect (sending single women in larger numbers) was present, but the cause (uneasy men yielding to pressure from groups with a lot of money) was absent.

[fortunateking]

A is correct as even only one women was sent abroad by the church boards not under the monetary influence from the women missionary society is enough to form the effect without cause

[Robert Carroll]

fortunateking,

And answer choice (A) is certainly doing more than that! It's showing that the greatest number of single women missionaries were sent by boards that didn't have the reason the passage posits, which does a lot to break the connection there.

Robert Carroll