#14 - Astronomer: Does a recent meteorite from Mars contain

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there Boudreaux happy to help. In the context of this argument, "provides no justification" means that the author never explained himself. It's not that his premises do not link to his conclusion, but that he actually didn't provide any premises.

Taking something for granted does not necessarily indicate that conditional reasoning is present. All it means is that the person making the argument made an assumption that something was true, rather than saying that it was true and offering evidence to support it. We can see LSAT authors taking things for granted in causal arguments, conditional arguments, arguments based on analogies or surveys or examples, etc. An argument based on a survey, for example, might "take for granted" that the population surveyed was representative of the population about which the author drew a conclusion, or that the answers provided by the survey respondents were accurate and truthful. Nothing conditional to deal with there!

The problem with answer C is not that it indicates conditional reasoning where none was present, but that it describes something the author did not do (and thus that answer fails the "Fact Test" that we apply to questions in the "Prove" family of questions). The author didn't necessarily presume that Tagar was wrong because the other people outnumber him. Instead, he presumed Tagar was wrong simply because he presumed the others were right!

Don't go looking for conditionals where none are indicated! Absent those classic conditional indicators, or at least a structure that is easily translated into an "if...then" statement while maintaining the author's intended meaning, there's no need to go down that particular rabbit hole. For the answers to Flaw questions, just ask yourself "does this describe what happened in the argument?" and also "does this match my prephrase?"

Good luck, keep at it!

[ericau02]

Hi I am just a little confused with the explanation above im doing blind review and im confused I know that B is the correct ac and I picked D but how is A a source argument??? that definition seems off it confusing, is there another explanation for why A is wrong, I am trying to understand this question fully considering I had a hard time answering it.

[George George]

@ericau02

Sure! (A) is not an assumption the Astronomer makes. The Astronomer's assumption is just "if you disagree with Swiderski and Terrada then you're wrong!" There's no assumption being made that any of these biologists have "always held the views attributed to them." (Taken literally, that could be quite bizarre - were they thinking about the size of Martian bacteria at birth?!) For (A) to be correct, the Astronomer's conclusion would have to be much more extreme, maybe something like "Tagar's has always held this incorrect view, and he has been wrong the entire time."