#14 - Scientist: A controversy in paleontology centers on

[Adam Tyson]

I think the relationship between standing up and having free use of the hands is more causal than conditional, blade21cn. Let's look at the conditional possibilities:

1. If you stand upright, you have free use of the hands

That's not what the author is saying, because free use of the hands is only made possible, rather than being absolutely required. I'm not sure I would agree that standing upright by definition means that the hands are free, although that certainly isn't much of a stretch.

2. If you have free use of the hands, then you stand upright

Hmmm, maybe. But is standing upright really required? Standing up might make free use possible, but that isn't as strong as saying nothing else does make it possible and that standing is therefore necessary. I think this interpretation is closer, but still a stronger claim than that made by the author.

Causally, though, looks good, because the author uses the active language of "makes" - standing causes the possibility of free use of the hands because it "makes" that possible. So, if I felt so inclined, I would treat this as a causal claim.

Ultimately, though, there is nothing about this argument that makes me think I need to treat it conditionally OR causally. Instead, I simply focus on the timeline. The author argues about what came first, and he has his reasons why he thinks so. We need to weaken that, so we want some evidence that he may have the timeline wrong, and that his evidence may not be good enough. My focus, rather than on a diagram or a causal claim, is strictly on "find some evidence that suggests advanced toolmaking prior to standing up."

We often have a tendency to try to force our analysis into familiar frameworks, and conditional and causal frameworks can quickly become crutches that we lean on too heavily and that end up dragging us down rather than lifting us up (I think my metaphor broke down there somewhere, but stay with me!) If you see them jumping out at you, great, use them! But if you don't see clear conditional or causal indications in the stimulus, don't try to apply them, and instead look at the argument another way, with a more broad view of the overall structure. After all, in LR it's usually fewer than half of all the questions that can be categorized as either conditional or causal, so there's many other ways that we should be going about the business of analyzing them.

[twendell]

Why is it ok to assume an advanced hunting weapon is a tool? While my colloquial understanding of "tool" would include it, I felt uncomfortable assuming that an anthropologist's definition of tool would include an advanced hunting weapon. Is that a jump test makers expect me to make?

[Zach Foreman]

twendell,
Yes, this is a common enough definition that LSAT takers are expected to make this jump. "A tool is an object used to extend the ability of an individual to modify features of the surrounding environment." It is a little challenging since they don't make the jump in any other answer choice.

[lina2020]

Hi PowerScore,

I had trouble deciding between B, D and E when I was working through this question and although I can understand the reason for selecting B, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why D and E are eliminated.

For D - if free use of hands is the same for those who first stood upright and those who did not, then wouldn't that go against the very premises that the author states in the last sentence of the stimulus to support the conclusion?

For E - I thought this statement directly countered the scientist's premise and would therefore weaken his argument.

Any insight is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Answer D has nothing to do with free use of the hands, lina2020, but is instead about dexterity, an entirely different concept. The argument is not about how good you are with your hands, just whether they are free or unencumbered.

Answer E is about using tools, not making them, and so it also has nothing to do with the argument. Who cares whether a user has to stand upright? We want to know about the people that MADE the tool! Maybe I can teach a dog to use the TV remote, but that doesn't mean the dog can build me a new one!

[lsat_student0543]

I see two ways to weaken the argument: (1) Show prehistoric humans who could stand upright lacking advanced tools & (2) Show prehistoric humans who could not stand upright possessing advanced tools.

Isn't (C) an example of (1)?

[Robert Carroll]

lsat,

(1) doesn't weaken the argument, and in fact is quite consistent with it. The author thinks that prehistoric humans stood upright first. Then we'd expect that standing upright happened, an indeterminate amount of time passed, and THEN humans developed sophisticated tools. In that interim time, we HAVE to find humans who stood upright, but didn't yet have advanced toolmaking. So far from being against the author's argument, the kind of situation in (1) is practically required for the author's argument to work.

Robert Carroll

[sxzhao]

I found this question confusing because the scientist's argument is fundamentally unsound, which makes me unsure what to attack/weaken? Should I be weakening the given argument - which doesn't even work by itself? OR should I weaken the sound argument that actually warrants the conclusion? To explain my thoughts:

Scientist's argument (let's call this version original) :

P1: toolmaking -> free use of hands
P2: standing up -> free use of hands
C: toolmaking -> standing up (as the scentist believes that they stood up first implying that standing up is necesary for toolmaking)

It's noticeable that P1 and P2 above doesn't warrant conclusion at all. Instead to reach this conclusion, P2 will have to be reversed: "free use of hands -> standing up"

My confusion is mainly between choise B and D:
Choice (D) shows "standing up" is NOT a SUFFICIENT condition for free is use hands, although may or may not be necessary - this denies P2 of Version Original
Choice (B) shows "standing up" is NOT a NECESSARY condition for toolmaking - this directly attacks the drawn conclusion, BUT NOT THE ALBEIT PROBLEMATIC REASONING THAT LEADS TO THE CONCLUSION, I worry that by doing this, we willfully ignore the ARGUMENT itself.

[Dana D]

Hey sxzhao,

The scientist's arguement is that standing up is a necessary prerequisite to advanced toolmaking, because the ability to stand up allows one to freely use their hands, which you need in order to make advanced tools. This argument does logically make sense, but it's a pretty easy one to weaken - all you have to do is show that standing up is not a necessary condition for advanced toolmaking. Your diagramming looks correct, I think you just need to change how you are thinking about weakening the argument.

Answer choice (B) shows that standing upright is not a necessary condition for advanced toolmaking. These humans made advanced tools but never learned to stand up. They must have had free use of their hands, since that is a necesary condition for toolmaking, but they didn't have to stand up to achieve this.

Answer choice (D) is irrelevant - the level of dexterity is not important according to the logic of the stimulus, it is the free use of hands. Presumably, the prehestoric humans who haven't learned to stand up are moving about on their hands and knees. Their hands might be just as dextrious as yours and mine, but they can't freely use them the way we can becuase they have to rely on their hands to move them through the world. This answer choice doesn't attack the logic the author used to conclude that standing is a prerequisite for toolmaking.

Hope that helps!

[thomas33]

I chose E ultimately because I didn't like that B was about weaponry, which I thought could be in a different category than tools.

I'm a bit confused bc this question centers on nuances in language--maker vs user but somehow the correct answer allows a shift in language from tool to weapon?

I also had the perhaps logically flawed thought that if a tool doesnt a require to stand up then surely it wouldnt require a maker to stand up.