#22 - Devan has never bothered to be kind to me.

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Flaw. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

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

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

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

[Robot1212]

Anyone know what the flaw in this question is? Is it just that they made an extreme argument? Like it's a possibility that Devan is ambivalent and not necessarily the enemy?

Premise: D -> /Kind and (/H or /C )
Premise: /meet criteria for friendship
Conclusion: He is my enemy


A)
Premise: officer -> 2 years or CM or SQ
Fact: E only member 1 year and not CM
Conclusion: Evelyn not officer

Flaw? Well even though isnt those two things, she could still have SQ

B)
Premise: Thrive -> Sunny spot + watered regularly
Fact: /Sunny Spot + /Watered Regularly
Conclusion: not as healthy as it should be

Flaw? I would say this argument is pretty solid - maybe a better conclusion would be /thrive

C)
Premise: book widely reviewed
Premise: Not received a bad review
Conclusion: Critics loved this book

Seems like this is also extreme in the sense that maybe the critics are ambivalent ?

D)
Premise: NB acceptable -> acceptable S + E + W border
conclusion: at least 1 border developed
Flaw: Maybe the NB wont be acceptable...therefore none of them will be developed

E) I picked this one when taking the test.
Everyone A or P or Ac -> society halt
/Everyone A or P or AC

Conclusion: /society halt

Flaw: Mistaken negation
A-> B
/A
Conclusion: /B

[letsdothis]

I think the flaw is red herring. In the stimulus, author talks about the criteria of friends. Since it doesn't meet it, author concludes it's the opposite but relatable topic (red herring)- enemy. We don't know what the criteria of enemy is.

Same applies to C. Author talks about reviewing and then jumps to loving the book (relatable but not really relevant)

Pls correct me if I'm wrong!

[Adam Tyson]

We would call this a False Dilemma, which is what happens whenever someone acts as if there are only two options and fails to consider that there may be a third choice or maybe a multitude of other choices. This one fits into that first category, because there is a third option available, and that is being neither a friend nor an enemy but something in between. Ambivalent, perhaps, or cordial but not a friend, of maybe dislike but less extreme than hatred.

Answer C has the same problem, because it's possible that the reviews were not at either extreme end of the spectrum but were somewhere in between. Again, ambivalent, or mediocre, or just moderately praising.

[sidneythomas1222@gmail.com]

Does the number of necessary conditions not have to match in the answer choice? I got this question wrong because I deemed the number of necessary conditions (2 in the stimulus: not unkind & not offering help/companionship) more important than the false dilemma. The correct answer only states one necessary condition (no hostile reviews).

[atierney]

Greetings Sidney,

Hello. So, the key on flaw questions (PR's or otherwise) is to always get to the flaw. While on other parallel questions, the most striking feature of the stimulus should be that which you look at first in terms of choosing an answer choice, with flaw questions, the most striking feature (regardless of whether it's striking to you or not) should be the fact that the reasoning is flawed. So the first thing to do here would be to identify the flaw. I agree, false dilemma is a fine way of looking at the flaw here (basically one extreme or the other, rather than the ever-so oft tested middle ground), and thus the next step is to pick the answer choice that has a false dilemma. C does this, because it assumes that if the critics don't hate the book, they love it. I'm not sure which answer choice you selected, because no other answer choice (in my estimation) exhibits the false dilemma flaw. Without the flaw, no other answer choice should really be thought of as a contender here.

[lsatquestions]

Please explain why E is incorrect.

[Adam Tyson]

I think Robot1212 did a good job of explaining that earlier in this thread, so I'll just recap: answer E is a Mistaken Negation, which is a conditional reasoning flaw and therefore not the same type of flaw found in the stimulus, a False Dilemma.

[mkarimi73]

When the stimulus says "criteria for friendship," is that criteria necessary or sufficient for friendship? I'm curious to know if this question required diagramming conditionals.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi mkarimi73!

The author of the stimulus is effectively saying that, if Devan was a friend, then (at least?) one of the mentioned conditions--being kind, offering help, or offering companionship--would be met.

It's not clear from the stimulus alone, however, whether any one of these conditions on its own is sufficient to establish friendship. It's possible that if Devan had met one of these conditions, the author would find him to meet the basic criteria of friendship, or perhaps only if he met two of them, or perhaps all three. We can represent these possibilities of what it might mean using conditional reasoning:

Friend kind OR help OR companionship

Friend kind AND help AND companionship

In the end, it's unnecessary to know which of these represents what the author of the stimulus is getting at in order to identify which answer choice parallels the flaw. We know that Devan has failed to meet all three conditions. However, a flaw creeps in because this may be enough to conclude that Devan is not be a friend, but the conclusion is stronger--it additionally claims that Devan is an enemy.

Answer choice (C) states, "This book has been widely reviewed and hasn't received even one hostile review. Hence we can conclude that, so far, all the critics have loved this book." This mirrors the above flaw. In the stimulus, the absence of certain features was taken to imply that Devan was not just "not a friend," but instead an enemy. In answer choice (C), the absence of hostile reviews isn't taken just to show that critics haven't been hostile to it, but rather this absence of criticism is taken to imply that critics "loved" the book. Not being hostile to it does not imply loving the book, just as Devan not being a friend does not imply that he is an enemy.