#26 - Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation
(See the complete passage discussion here: lsat/viewtopic.php?t=13789)

The correct answer choice is (E)

The answer to this Author Perspective question is already prephrased in our VIEWSTAMP analysis above, and represents the main point of the passage. The author regards Temple’s hypothesis as initially plausible (line 45) but ultimately unconvincing, suggesting that the scarcity of Calvaria major could have been caused by factors other than the disappearance of the dodo bird (58-62).

Answer choice (A): As shown in the last paragraph, the author does not regard Temple’s views as essentially correct. On the contrary: she agrees with the leading experts in the field that the population decline of Calvaria major could be due to factors other than the disappearance of the dodo bird. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): While Temple saw his empirical findings as vindicating his hypothesis (lines 42-43), the author remains skeptical, holding that they only lent his argument “a semblance of rigor” (lines 33-34). This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): The author does not praise Temple’s hypothesis as an example of a valuable scientific achievement, making this answer choice easy to eliminate.

Answer choice (D): As with answer choice (C), there is no evidence that the author regards Temple’s theory as laudable or praiseworthy. Its formulation only appears precise (“semblance of rigor”).

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. In the last paragraph, the author rejects the belief that the scarcity of Calvaria major was necessarily caused by the disappearance of the dodo bird. Temple’s hypothesis, in other words, is seen as an attempt to explain a state of affairs that did not in fact exist.

[BMM2021]

Hi,

Although I wasn't comfortable with D for the reasons you mention here, I chose it over E because of the language used in E. I understand "state of affairs" to mean "circumstances", so I read answer E as the equivalent of saying the author believes the the circumstances which inform Temple's hypothesis to be false (i.e. Dodo's aren't extinct, or Calvaria major isn't a rare tree, etc.)

I entirely understand how an interpretation of answer choice E that is equivalent to something like "a flawed/unproven reasoning" fits the bill, but the way the answer is written is instead saying that the circumstances which Temple's hypothesis is attempting to explain are themselves false, not that Temple's reasoning or conclusion or the explanation itself is false. Although I didn't think any of the other answers were great fits, I couldn't bring myself to agree that the author believes the facts which Temple's hypothesis addresses are false.

My main question, then, is should I instead interpret "state of affairs" to mean something akin to "causal reasoning?" If so, how does "a state of affairs that did not in fact exist" map in meaning to the idea that Temple's hypothesis is probably false, because evidence exists which weakens the argument?

[BMM2021]

Sorry - I actually found that the definition of state of affairs in the philosophical sense is a set of circumstances required for a proposition to be true. By that definition, answer E makes sense to me. However, I wouldn't have initially understood it that way. Is there a set of philosophical definitions that one should know for the LSAT?

Thanks

[Beth Hayden]

Hi BMM,

Your initial thought was correct here, by "state of affairs" they are talking about facts, what was actually happening, not about the reasoning Temple used to formulate his theory from those facts.

Temple drew a connection between the extinction of the Dodo bird and decline of Calvaria major, and he tried to explain why the first might have caused the second. But the problem the author points out is that Temple was wrong about the historical details he used to reason that conclusion (the "state of affairs"). The fourth paragraph outlines problems with Temple's research. For example, he only found 13 trees, but Strahm found hundreds, and the trees she found were younger than he estimated. So the idea is not that Temple's reasoning was flawed, it's that he had the wrong facts to begin with. He was trying to explain a set of circumstances (few young trees, seeds that can't germinate), but researchers later found he was wrong about the facts he was trying to explain.

Hope that's helpful!
Beth

[BMM2021]

Thank you, Beth. I guess I'm unsure how to distinguish between the state of affairs that Temple is attempting to explain (the Dodo's extinction and Calvaria's decline, both of which are true) and the hypothetical state of affairs that Temple establishes to form his argument (e.g. the number of the trees, the digestion of seeds, etc., which are undermined by other evidence). The state of affairs which Temple is attempting to explain are those that are not being debated - Dodo birds and Calvaria - while Temple uses another hypothetical state of affairs within that explanation.

Thus, I understood E to be saying that the overarching state of affairs that Temple attempts to explain (dodo bird being extinct & calvaria in decline) "did not in fact exist," which would be incorrect. I didn't assume that the "state of affairs" was referencing the hypothetical circumstances that Temple was using in his argument, because I found it odd to say those kinds of facts are "explained" by the argument; premises within an argument are used to support the explanation itself. For example, one wouldn't say that a argument connecting Napoleon's height to his defeat at Waterloo is an explanation of a historic battle; the details of the battle (factual or not) are simply background of and premises within the argument.

Sorry for the hair-splitting on this one; I just want to make sure I know how to interpret these answers in the future. Even though the other options didn't look great to me, I just found E to be entirely false, given my reading of it, so I picked another option. Ultimately, I think E would have had to say something like "an explanation which incorporates a state of affairs that does not in fact exist" for me to understand it in the way intended. Not sure how to approach this differently.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Hi BMM,

Your initial thought was correct here, by "state of affairs" they are talking about facts, what was actually happening, not about the reasoning Temple used to formulate his theory from those facts.

Temple drew a connection between the extinction of the Dodo bird and decline of Calvaria major, and he tried to explain why the first might have caused the second. But the problem the author points out is that Temple was wrong about the historical details he used to reason that conclusion (the "state of affairs"). The fourth paragraph outlines problems with Temple's research. For example, he only found 13 trees, but Strahm found hundreds, and the trees she found were younger than he estimated. So the idea is not that Temple's reasoning was flawed, it's that he had the wrong facts to begin with. He was trying to explain a set of circumstances (few young trees, seeds that can't germinate), but researchers later found he was wrong about the facts he was trying to explain.

Hope that's helpful!
Beth

[Adam Tyson]

The first thing I would say is that Temple is not trying to explain anything about why the dodo is extinct. It is extinct, and the passage never gets into why that's so. That's just evidence that Temple uses while attempting to explain something else.

Second, a "state of affairs" is kind of like the word "phenomenon" - it's a fancy, confusing way of saying something very, very simple. A state of affairs is just the way things are. It's the truth, the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It doesn't refer to a type of reasoning, or an argument, or a position. And a phenomenon is just a thing that happens.

The state of affairs that Temple is trying to explain is that there are only 13 Calvaria Major trees and they are all overmature, dying, and over 300 years old. Temple thinks the extinction of the dodo explains that state of affairs.

But in the last paragraph, the author tells us that that's not the way things are. It's not true, because there are literally hundreds of these trees and some of them are much younger than 300 years, meaning they germinated after the dodo went extinct. So Temple is trying to explain a state of affairs that is not true. His whole hypothesis is based on false facts. That's why answer E is correct.

One more thing, and that is the use of prephrasing, which is what we at Powerscore call it when you determine what the correct answer needs to say in order to be correct. In this case, you should have relied primarily on the last paragraph and prephrased that the author regards Temple's hypothesis to be incorrect and not well grounded in fact. That alone should allow you to confidently and quickly eliminate all four of the wrong answers. It's not correct, or vindicated, or valuable, or laudable.