#10 - Historian: In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (E).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

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

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

[rosegray11]

Could someone please help and explain to me the flaw in this argument and why E is correct?

I narrowed it down between B + D and picked B because I thought it was a causation/correlation flaw. Then, when I saw that the correct answer was E, I tried to go through my analysis again and figure out why E was correct, but I could not figure out how one could come to E as the correct answer!

Thank you!!

[rocketman16]

I had flagged this question for review, but wound up getting it correct anyway, so I'll try to explain my rationale for muddling through the uncertainty in this question. This test has a way of throwing in answer choices that make you think "That definitely could be a flaw in the argument..." and those choices throw you off. Pre-phrasing is helpful here. The flaw that stood out most to me here was that the author is assuming (taking for granted) that the Oromo influenced the Swahili and not the other way around as we are given no reason to think that the Oromo started building their tombs before the Swahili based on the info the argument. Answers B and D are in a similar vein to this pre-phrase in their wording, and you kind of need to dig deeper at this point to discern what precisely the answer means.
For me, I axed A and C immediately, then B, then had a bit of harder time deciding between D and E in the moment. The author is in fact doing what option B suggests, but the problem is not that he/she is concluding that that one event (Oromo building tombs) caused the second (Swahili building tombs), but that he/she is assuming that without considering that the second event may have caused the first instead. Option D was the most tempting answer besides E, as it relates to the pre-phrased problem that the author is not considering alternative possibilities for the phenomenon in question. However, the author was not trying to conclude that the Oromo were the original designers of the structures in discussion, only that the Swahili were influenced by the Oromo. If, for example, the Oromo DID build their tombs before the Swahili did, it is possible that the Swahili would have no knowledge of this third civilization and their only exposure to such architecture would have been through the Oromo, in which case the author's conclusion still logically follows. The problem is that we don't know for sure that the Oromo built their tombs first, the author is just assuming it. This goes back to the initial pre-phrase and is reflected in option E.

Hopefully this helps. If there's anything questionable in my thinking, please chime in!

[clbrogesr]

Hi - completely concur with almost everything that Rocketman wrote, I just thought I'd add in a few additional reasons why I thought that some other answer choices were wrong. I also narrowed it down on the first pass to B, D, E. And the stimulus engages in a really common flaw on the LSAT that occurs anytime an argument asserts that A caused B.

Any time the LSAT claims that A caused B, try to have alarm bells going off. Here, the author is not making an explicit causal claim, but there is something of a soft-causal argument happening - the author is saying that Oromo culture influenced Swahili culture. Any time I see an A caused/influenced/impacted B argument, I try to consider one of the three possibilities.

First, the chicken and the egg possibility. What if A didn't impact B, but B impacted A? Second, what if a third thing - C - impacted both A and B, and that is why they appear to have a relationship? Third, what if there is no actual relationship and the apparent relationship is a pure coincidence? Those three possibilities - B impacted A, C impacted both A and B, or no impact between them - are what I try to search consider on questions like this.

To the answer choices! B is tempting, because it plays off that first possibility I mentioned, and the LSAT writers know that. But - as I always try to do whenever I'm down to a final two or three options - return to the stimulus. Does the author ever say that either 1) one event came before the other or 2) that one event caused the other? No! The two key pillars of this answer do not match the stimulus. Take it out with the trash.

Then, answer choice D. At first, I was pretty tempted by this answer, because it fits with the second possibility that I mentioned. Again, the LSAT writers know this. My problem with this answer was that it also falls apart upon comparison to the stimulus. First, we know that among the people the Swahili culture had contact with, only the Oromo had this particular design. Which means that the only remaining possibility is that a third civilization influenced the Oromo, who influenced the Swahili. But that - I would argue - is valid, to say that a third civ way back influenced one then the other. That's not a flaw. The flaw is assuming the order, which is what answer choice E gives us. Hope that helps offer some additional thoughts.

Lastly, always go back to the stimulus. A really common time-suck for me (and many others I know) is that I spend time comparing answers against EACH OTHER. I noticed a big improvement in my LSAT score once I stopped comparing answer choices against each other (except for the narrow purpose of teasing out differences) and started comparing them against the all-holy stimulus.

[Adam Tyson]

These are all good analyses, clbrogesr and rocketman16!

To sum it up for rosegray11 , answer B is incorrect because the stimulus never said that the Oromo built their tombs this way first, so the author isn't basing their conclusion on the order in which things occurred. Instead, the author is ASSUMING the order, and therein lies the flaw.

And answer D is incorrect because it's not true. The argument did NOT assume that no third culture did this before either the Oromo or Swahili people. And it's also not relevant. because it wouldn't matter if some other culture did do it first, since the stimulus says that the Swahili had no contact with any such third culture. It would be fine for some other culture to have done this first, because the Swahili still couldn't have been influenced by them directly, and therefore may have been influenced by the Oromo as the author concluded.

The best prephrases here should be based on the classic Causal Reasoning attacks: maybe there was some third cause, or the cause and effect are reversed, or we could have the effect without the cause (all nicely summed up by clbrogesr above). If you go into the answers looking for one of those, then answer E should stand out, because that assumed chronology is directly tied to the possibility of the cause and effect being reversed and also to the possibility of the effect occurring (the Swahili doing this) in the absence of the purported cause (if the Oromo hadn't done it first, then they could not be the influence/cause in this case). Causes have to come before their effects, after all!

Good work, team!

[Bruin96]

I had a bit of trouble with this question. Although E was my pre-phrase, I ultimately didn't pick it because I didn't see how it weakened/hurt the argument. I know flaw questions are descriptive weakening, and I don't understand how E does that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for Flaw questions, the correct answer, if added in as a premise will hurt the argument because it was a bad thing that the author either forgot to think about this or forgot to add this in.

[Adam Tyson]

Not exactly, Bruin96, but very close! The correct answer would never be a premise of the argument, because it points out a problem with the argument. Think of it more as a counter-premise. A good flaw answer will do as you described - point out something that the author forgot to account for, or else something the author took for granted that might be false.

One thing that stood out to me about your question was that you saw that answer E matched your prephrase, but then rejected it because you felt it didn't hurt the argument. If that's true, then it should never have been your prephrase in the first place! You have to trust those prephrases, and select the answer that best matches what you knew you were looking for. Otherwise, there's no point to doing them! That's like diagramming a logic game and then ignoring your diagram when you answer the questions, which would be silly.

Answer E is the flaw in the argument because the author DID take that order of events for granted, and that IS a problem, because if that assumption about the order is incorrect the argument would make no sense. It was wrong of the author to assume that the Oromo were building tombs that way before the Swahili were, because we have been given no evidence for that.

[Bruin96]

Thank you for your response that cleared a lot up for me!

Would it be possible to view "presumes/assumes/takes for granted" answer choices as, if the author did assume this, and this answer(assumption) didn't happen our argument would fall apart/not make sense? I like the idea of having a tactic to double-check flaw answers as a safety net.

[Adam Tyson]

If the thing they assumed did not occur, then their assumption would be false and the argument would fall apart, but ONLY IF that assumption was truly necessary. If they assumed something that was not necessary, it wouldn't be relevant if it didn't occur, and it would not be a good flaw answer!

So you have to ask yourself, did they really assume that? Was that necessary for them to arrive at that conclusion? If it was, then you have to ask yourself if it was wrong for them to assume it. If not - if that assumption was not necessary - then the answer is already wrong and it doesn't matter if the assumption is relevant.

[goingslow]

Hi there!

What would be an example of (C), "draws a restricted conclusion from premises that provide strong support for a much broader conclusion"?

Thanks a lot!