Q19 - Anders: The physical structure

[LSAT-Chang]

Could someone help me answer how (A) would help in evaluating Yang's argument?

[timmydoeslsat]

Anders says that the physical structure of the brain plays an important role in thinking. There, in developing these thinking machines, the researchers should closely model the machines on that structure.

Yang retorts that just because something is important does not mean it is necessary. To bolster his argument, he notes that flying machines that were modeled after birds did not work. Workable aircraft craft are very different structurally from birds.

His conclusion is that the researchers would increase their chances of success by ignoring the physical structure of the brain and just focus on the function.

Isn't that a bit strong? To ignore it?

What if the physical structure of birds did not work, as stated, but that it gave the researchers a lot of great data and insight in how to build the workable aircraft.

This could potentially harm the argument that Yang posits. We need to know if this is the case or not.

[bbirdwell]

Yes! Focussing on Yang's precise conclusion is helpful here: they should IGNORE brain structure.

Why? B/c bird structures don't make good airplane structures.

(A) says "Even if those structures didn't fly, what if studying them provided CRUCIAL information?"

Well, if that's the case, then Yang's analogy fails. And ignoring brain structure might be a bad idea after all.

[katl]

Anders says that the physical structure of the brain plays an important role in thinking. There, in developing these thinking machines, the researchers should closely model the machines on that structure.

Yang retorts that just because something is important does not mean it is necessary. To bolster his argument, he notes that flying machines that were modeled after birds did not work. Workable aircraft craft are very different structurally from birds.

His conclusion is that the researchers would increase their chances of success by ignoring the physical structure of the brain and just focus on the function.

Isn't that a bit strong? To ignore it?

What if the physical structure of birds did not work, as stated, but that it gave the researchers a lot of great data and insight in how to build the workable aircraft.

This could potentially harm the argument that Yang posits. We need to know if this is the case or not.

I realize answer choice E is wrong, but can someone explain why it is wrong? I have found that in similar questions, sometimes I mistakenly chose answers like E (I guess to weaken a claim but showing an counterexample, if E even constitutes a counterexample). Can someone please help?

[maryadkins]

Good question! Answer choice (E) does seem to affect the argument. But let's examine it closely.

First of all, it starts with "some." How many is some? On the LSAT, some is just some unknown quantity more than one. That means there could have been two flying machines ever that were not closely modeled on birds, and both of them failed to work. Is this really that helpful in evaluating Yang's claims? Two machines is really not a lot ... at all.

Answer choice (A), on the contrary, has stronger language that tells us the effect on Yang's claims much more clearly: "crucial" to the development of "workable aircraft."

As for the other answers:

(B) is out of scope.
(C) brings in time, which we aren't talking about. We're talking about structure versus function.
(D) makes it about the people (and only some of the people) doing the development, and that's not what we're interested in.

Hope this helps.