#11 - The chorus in a play, like a narrator in a novel

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Assumption. The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

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

Answer choice (E):

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

[katnyc]

Hi powerscore,
For this question I was between choices A and E. I got the correct answer but i want to be sure. Is A wrong because it says "never"

Thank you

[atierney]

Hi Katnyc,

One thing that you appreciate in LSAT questions after a while, and this is really true regardless of question type, is that the answer choices, the correct ones that is, are generally going to be those that maximally resolutive of any and all ambiguities. In other words, the issue is really clarity (and yes, resolutive is a word I believe). At all times, whether in the "prove" family, the "help" family, or otherwise, you're looking for the answer that leaves the least room for further questioning. The answer choice that might be plausibly correct, but that also opens the doors for further questions is generally going to be wrong, especially when there is another choice that is definitively correct, and would do so without any ambiguity.

This particular question, I believe, is a very good example of this. D is necessarily true given the argument. If the information given by the chorus is sometimes not consistent, and it is this fact that leads one to conclude that it therefore is not equivalent to the narrator, then it must be necessarily be true that the narrator is never not consistent.

Now, like you, I believe that being deceptive is being inconsistent, and I also believe that this might the dictionary definition of being deceptive. But being deceptive has a connotation that goes much further than just "delivering inconsistent information." In other words, it has a value judgment tied to it, inextricably. You want to stay away from value judgments, to the extent possible on the LSAT. You want to stay away from answer choices that use terms that are not clearly used in the stimulus, especially to the extent that another choice that does use terms from the stimulus is available, and you want to stay away from answer choices that create additional questions, such as, what exactly would be required for a narrator never to be deceptive? In a murder mystery, like the famous The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is the narrator deceptive there? I don't know. And on the LSAT, I don't have to.

Let me know if you have further questions.

[leonardx141]

Hi powerscore,
For this question I was between choices A and E. I got the correct answer but i want to be sure. Is A wrong because it says "never"

Thank you

Hi,
A is wrong because of "deceptive". D contains "never" as well, and the "never" here is perfectly fine to be the necessary assumption. In the passage, the argument is about "inconsistent" instead of deception. You seem to have no problem finding that the assumption made in the passage is that "the narrator in a novel is never inconsistent," which is D. However, A is equating "deceptive" with "inconsistent". These two words, even in real life, are not of the same meaning. Something can be deceptive without being inconsistent, and vice versa. The narrator can be inconsistent, saying that A likes apple the best and later in the novel changes to A likes orange the best. That is inconsistent, but it is not necessarily deceptive.

The biggest red flag here is not the real-world application of these words, but the general principle in LSAT. Lsat doesn't allow assumptions to be drawn that equate two words in 99% of the time, if not all the time. For A to be true, we have to assume that "inconsistent" and "deceptive" are equivalent. We have to assume that for the context of the novel, deception entails inconsistency. This is the assumptions that is not allowed in logical reasoning, and test writers would use these assumptions against test takers, since it is not that uncommon for us to interchange these two words irl.

[TootyFrooty]

Hi Katnyc,

One thing that you appreciate in LSAT questions after a while, and this is really true regardless of question type, is that the answer choices, the correct ones that is, are generally going to be those that maximally resolutive of any and all ambiguities. In other words, the issue is really clarity (and yes, resolutive is a word I believe). At all times, whether in the "prove" family, the "help" family, or otherwise, you're looking for the answer that leaves the least room for further questioning. The answer choice that might be plausibly correct, but that also opens the doors for further questions is generally going to be wrong, especially when there is another choice that is definitively correct, and would do so without any ambiguity.



This particular question, I believe, is a very good example of this. D is necessarily true given the argument. If the information given by the chorus is sometimes not consistent, and it is this fact that leads one to conclude that it therefore is not equivalent to the narrator, then it must be necessarily be true that the narrator is never not consistent.

Now, like you, I believe that being deceptive is being inconsistent, and I also believe that this might the dictionary definition of being deceptive. But being deceptive has a connotation that goes much further than just "delivering inconsistent information." In other words, it has a value judgment tied to it, inextricably. You want to stay away from value judgments, to the extent possible on the LSAT. You want to stay away from answer choices that use terms that are not clearly used in the stimulus, especially to the extent that another choice that does use terms from the stimulus is available, and you want to stay away from answer choices that create additional questions, such as, what exactly would be required for a narrator never to be deceptive? In a murder mystery, like the famous The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is the narrator deceptive there? I don't know. And on the LSAT, I don't have to.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Hi, you mentioned that you want to stay away from terms that aren't the same but in RC in the Bible it says many terms are exchanged with one another such as "boycott" becomes "action"... and there were several other examples. Can you please clarify?

[Robert Carroll]

TootyFrooty,

Synonyms can be interchangeable, and, further, terms of "inclusion" can be substituted in certain circumstances. Imagine we were instead dealing with a Must Be True question, and the stimulus said "All healthy adults have livers." An answer choice that said "All healthy 37-year-old Finns have livers" would be fine. Finns are humans. 37-year-olds are adults. However, if the stimulus said "All Finns speak a Uralic language", an answer that said "all humans speak a Uralic language" would not be correct. All Finns are people but not all people are Finns. So inferences where one term includes the other can be made. For synonyms: to me, a 12 oz can of Coca Cola is a "soda". To my girlfriend, it's a "pop". The LSAT is not going to expect you to know these terms are synonymous, but in real life, if my girlfriend asks me to get her a "pop", I know exactly what she means. When the words being used are much more common-sense and everyday, synonyms can be used perfectly interchangeably on the LSAT. What we should avoid doing is assuming words are interchangeable unless we can prove that, by common sense, they are. Let's say someone claims that the day is "muggy". Another claims it's "humid". Are these the same? I don't think we should assume that for LSAT purposes.

ANY time a different word is used, we should examine whether we have a relation of true synonymy or inclusion. If we can't be sure of that, it's safer to avoid the change in wording. Hope that helps!

Robert Carroll