Q18 - Editorialist: In all cultures

[dan]

18. (B)
Question Type: Identify the Flaw
The author assumes that most people would place higher moral value on protecting a family member than following laws. But what if this isn’t the case? What if most people actually think that the morality of following laws has higher moral value than protecting a family member? The author fails to consider this. If it were true, the argument would be destroyed. Answer (B) is correct.

(A) is incorrect. The argument does NOT make a broad generalization. Notice the phrase "sometimes morally right" in the passage. If we say "Kelly is 5 years old and she eats chocolate," we can also say "some children (at least one in this case) eat chocolate." The word "some" allows us to make this statement. "All" children would be too broad a generalization.
(C) is wrong. This presumption is never made in the argument.
(D) is incorrect. The argument never takes for granted that there is no obligation to follow laws.
(E) is not right either, because the passage clearly states that the person is "known" to be falsely accused.


#officialexplanation

[gyfirefire]

Could someone help me better understand (B)?

I got it right by eliminating the rest. But i still couldn't get why (B) is the right answer. In other words, how could i paraphrase this answer after reading the stimulus? Where is the logic gap located in the stimulus?

thanks a lot!

[dan]

Consider this analogy:

Experts agree that it is beneficial for children to have play time after school. But, after school is the only time that children have to do their homework. Thus, it must be the case that experts believe it is okay for children not to do their homework.

This is an extreme example, but it illustrates the same flaw. The author assumes that experts believe getting play time after school is more important than doing homework after school. The form of the argument is:

Doing A is good.
Thus, sacrificing B for A is okay.

Protecting family is good.
Thus, obstructing police in order to protect family is okay.

Wait a second! What if helping police is morally more important?

Hopefully that clarifies answer (B), but I should say that anticipating, or prephrasing, answer (B) is nearly impossible in this case. It's very tough to see ahead of time. That's okay. This is the nature of difficult LR questions. On the most difficult ones, it'll be tougher to anticipate the answer. You want to be sure you prepare yourself for the answer by correctly identifying the conclusion and the supporting premises (the argument core). If you do this consistently, you'll get tough questions right even when you can't see the gap immediately.

Hope this helps.

[gyfirefire]

thanks for the analogy and help!

[cyruswhittaker]

This is a tricky problem and I though I would share some of my thoughts on it:

Answer choice (C) is almost correct. If the author of this question inserted the word "not" before "...allowing the police..." then this choice would have been correct. The reasoning on page 99 in the manual would also have helped to justify it.

Afterall, the big assumption that I see is that by hiding an innocent person from the police (i.e. not allowing the police to arrest an innocent person), it might be that it helps the police in their work, rather than obstructing it.

Answer choice (B) attacks the argument by attacking merely the relationship between the premise (first sentence) and the intermediate conclusion (second sentence), really leaving the third sentence (and main conclusion) alone.

In transitioning from the first sentence (premise) to the intermediate conclusion (Thus, few...), the author assumes that there aren't other overriding moral principles that would make it so that the parents would not feel a moral right to hide the innocent family member.

Choice (B) explicitly brings this assumption up and causes one to question it.

[zl7391e]

mmm... I don't think adding "Not" somewhere in (C) would make C correct, since 'justice' is never brought up by the Editorialist.
My understanding is that the Editorialist say "one has a moral duty..." but his/her argument proceeds as if "one has the only moral duty to...". So B points out an unwarranted assumption.

[maryadkins]

Agree that it's a tricky problem because of the dang intermediate conclusion. But briefly, regarding your comment on (C):

Answer choice (C) is almost correct. If the author of this question inserted the word "not" before "...allowing the police..." then this choice would have been correct.

If we did this, (C) would read:

presumes, without providing justification, that not
allowing the police to arrest an innocent
person assists rather than obstructs justice

Does the argument assume this? No! It's the opposite of what we want. The author isn't assuming that hiding the innocent assists anyone--it's obstruction according to the conclusion.

More basically, the point that "justice" is not discussed in the stimulus is also true. We're concerned about the obstruction of the police in their work--not the obstruction of justice (though the phrase does sound very lawyerly).

[msdujon]

I was totally confused on what the correct answer was before reading this. I thought the answer was B however the Manhattan LSAT logical reasoning guide has C as the correct answer.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Can you tell me which page it is listed as answer choice (C)? I'd like to look into this to make any appropriate corrections, if needed.

Thanks!

[msdujon]

Sure.. page 99 of the logical reasoning guide. I have the Atlas LSAT guide.

[goriano]

(E) is not right either, because the passage clearly states that the person is "known" to be falsely accused.

The stimulus doesn't say the person is known to be falsely accused, only that such information is known BY THE PERSON'S PARENTS to be such. So it seems we wouldn't be challenging the premises to say that the person's parents could potentially have been mistaken. Is there another way of looking at (E) to see that it is wrong?

[maryadkins]

The stimulus doesn't say the person is known to be falsely accused, only that such information is known BY THE PERSON'S PARENTS to be such.

Interesting point!

There's a distinction between saying someone is "known" (generally) versus "known by X" (specific people) to be falsely accused, yes.

But either way, you're still innocent. The potential difference is between WHO knows. Everyone? Or just the parents? The key is that "known" to be falsely accused--no matter who is doing the knowing--means falsely accused.

Otherwise, "known" wouldn't be the right word. It would have to be "believed" or something similar that leaves room for doubt.

So (E) is still wrong for this reason. The parents can't be mistaken about their kids' innocence. If they were, it would contradict the premise that they "know" their child is falsely accused.

Does this make sense?

[boy5237]

I was between A and B and ended choosing A though.

I quickly eliminated C,D,and E I immediately thinking that those were out of scope.

Now, according to Dan's response, the reason A isn't the answer because the author actually qualified his conclusion: "it is... 'sometimes' morally right to obstruct police work."

The thing that confuses me is the word "broad."

I mean the author indeed said that the "moral duty principle" will be WIDELY ACCEPTED.

I thought just by asserting that "it will be widely accepted" on the evidence that a few people (which could be 1 or 2 because few = some) would embrace principle was already fallacious.

<At the same time... as I was writing this, I realized something... few is a synonym for some right... some could mean all... is that why that few could actually support the claim about widely accepted?>

So my question is when the answer choice says "justify a broad generalization," I could assume that, if it were to be the right answer, the author actually stated a strong conclusion (like Dan's example, Katie vs all kids) that cannot be supported by the relevant premises?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

There are two arguments here. The intermediate one that attempts to show that "few would deny" the claim about the morality of hiding the accused, yet innocent, family member. And then the main point, that attempts to show that it would be morally right to obstruct the police.

There is a string of quantifiers that run throughout the argument.

Almost universally accepted --> Few would deny --> Widely recognized

Along this strong of quantifiers there is no inconsistency, or flaw.

The issue raised in answer choice (A) about a broad generalization is not the degree to which the claim will be believed, but rather the strength of that claim. As Dan pointed out earlier, the claim isn't actually a broad generality since it only states that it would be held in some cases, but not necessarily most cases or all cases.

Generalizing from a single example (or even many examples) is an error of reasoning that represents the idea that the conclusion has been stated in stronger terms than can be justified in the evidence.

Hope that helps!

[hornswaggle]

I'm having trouble characterizing the flaw/assumption for this argument.

The argument states that it is "almost universally accepted" that you have an obligation to prevent harm to your family members.

From there, it argues:

1) "few" people would deny that it's ok to hide a son/daughter from the police if they're falsely accused (sub-conclusion), and that
2) therefore, it's ok to "sometimes" obstruct the police.

Basically, I thought that the argument gave insufficient evidence for both its conclusions. To be more precise, simply stating that a certain obligation is "almost universally accepted" does not mean 1 or 2 are true.

B) seems to address this by saying that other values could override the obligation to protect family.

Is this correct? Or is there a better way to characterize this problem?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

B) seems to address this by saying that other values could override the obligation to protect family.

Is this correct? Or is there a better way to characterize this problem?

Exactly right! The issue at stake is morality - what is, and what is not. Maybe an easier way to put this is, do the means justify the ends? While protecting one's family is moral, are all measures by which that could be accomplished also considered moral?

Sometimes on ID Flaw questions, you're really trying to describe the relationship between the premise and the conclusion, while on others you really have to think outside the box and consider issues the argument never really took into account (I think of these as assumptions that defend the argument, rather than assumptions that link together the argument).

Hope that helps!

[matthughes2]

18. (B)
Question Type: Identify the Flaw
The author assumes that most people would place higher moral value on protecting a family member than following laws. But what if this isn’t the case? What if most people actually think that the morality of following laws has higher moral value than protecting a family member? The author fails to consider this. If it were true, the argument would be destroyed. Answer (B) is correct.

(A) is incorrect. The argument does NOT make a broad generalization. Notice the phrase "sometimes morally right" in the passage. If we say "Kelly is 5 years old and she eats chocolate," we can also say "some children (at least one in this case) eat chocolate." The word "some" allows us to make this statement. "All" children would be too broad a generalization.
(C) is wrong. This presumption is never made in the argument.
(D) is incorrect. The argument never takes for granted that there is no obligation to follow laws.
(E) is not right either, because the passage clearly states that the person is "known" to be falsely accused.

I guess I'm confused about the reasoning here: A) would seem to be correct in that the author uses the assumed moral righteousness of a single example (it's morally right to hide a family member if they were falsely accused) to justify a broad generalization related to that example (few would therefore deny that it's sometimes morally right to commit obstruction of justice).

On top that that, B) seems problematic because it's not apparent to me that even if the speaker HAD considered "other moral principles" that would make obstruction NOT morally right generally, that they would affect the presumed moral righteousness of hiding a family member in one particular instance (if they were falsely accused).

Even if you negate B) (the speaker considers the possibility that other moral principles would be widely recognized as overriding any obligation to protect a family member from harm), that doesn't destroy the argument that it's "sometimes" (in this case, the single instance where your family member has been falsely accused, and then even within that narrow bit of spectrum outside of where it's "widely recognized" that some "other moral principle" would make it otherwise) okay to commit obstruction.

basically, it seems to me like B) still gives you too much wiggle room to accept the conclusion that even under one single circumstance it might be "widely accepted" that it's morally right to commit obstruction. A) just on its face seems to be the bigger flaw - basing a broad generalization justifying obstruction on one single instance where obstruction is okay.

I'm obviously wrong but I would like to hear why.

[deedubbew]

I eliminated B because of the words "widely recognized." Otherwise I would have chosen this answer choice over D, which is what I actually chose.

[LolaC289]

If (C) said "presumes, without providing justification, that NOT allowing the police to arrest an innocent person OBSTRUCT justice", it would be correct.

However, (C) reversed the author's assumption, which is not allowed to do.

For example,

M said we should not order takeout in restaurants, because we should not harm the environment.

M assumed that ORDER TAKEOUT in restaurants HARMS the environment.

It's wrong to say M assumed NOT ORDER TAKEOUT in restaurants PROTECTS the environment, maybe she actually thinks ordering in restaurant harms the environment no matter dine-in or takeout.

It wrong to say someone thinks ~A is ~wrong Just because someone thinks A is wrong. Just like (C) in this case.

[WilliamS670]

This is a flawed question in my opinion. The first sentence implies the duty to prevent harm to family members is almost universally accepted as absolute, i.e., it can't be overridden. If that's the case, failing to consider the possibility that other moral principles would be widely recognized as overriding the duty to prevent harm to family members is not a flaw, because the possibility doesn't exist. If you got (A) through POE (no other way to get there, of course), LSAC screwed you on this one.