Q2 - A factory spokesperson argue that

[tzyc]

Why is (B) correct?
I thought that:
P: A third party is responsible for something (some outsider has responsibility)
C: the party concerned is not responsible for it
And thought (C) matches...
Could someone give an explanation plz?
Maybe I should not make the stimuli/choises simple based on very basic idea?

Thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

Why is (B) correct?
I thought that:
P: A third party is responsible for something (some outsider has responsibility)
C: the party concerned is not responsible for it
And thought (C) matches...
Could someone give an explanation plz?
Maybe I should not make the stimuli/choises simple based on very basic idea?

I actually think you did a perfect job of summing up the underlying principle in the original argument (and we want to do so in fairly basic, general language so that we can apply this general concept to a different set of particulars in each answer choice).

Here's how (B) fits your model:
P: A third party is responsible for something (some outsider has responsibility)

Third party = adolescents ... "they have minds of their own and freely choose to act as they do" ... so adolescents have their own responsibility

C: the party concerned is not responsible for it

The conclusion in (B) says that "the parents are not responsible for the offenses of their adolescent children."

In terms of matching it to the original argument,

Factories = parents
Independent contractor = adolescents

Original argument was that the factory should not be blamed for the actions of the contractor.

(B)'s argument is that the parents should not be blamed for the actions of their adolescent children.

How does (C) fit your model?

P: A third party is responsible for something (some outsider has responsibility)

Who's the third party? (C) has only one party, the students. The issue is whether or not they should have to do their reading assignment. (We could stretch this to fit better by saying "whether they should be responsible for the reading assignment").

But we don't have any other party here. We can't say that "topics" are the third party. The "topics" are responsible for doing the reading assignment? It doesn't make any sense.

C: the party concerned is not responsible for it

The original conclusion is that "the factory is not to blame for this bad stuff".

(C)'s conclusion is that "the students shouldn't have to do this reading assignment".

We could stretch those to be a better match, but they are concerned with two pretty different concepts. The original and (B) are concerned with "who should be held responsible".

(C) is concerned with "is this a legitimate task for them to have to do".

If you'd like to give me your version of how (C) would match up with your original template, please do.

Nice work with your analysis of the original argument; you came up with a great template.

Hope this helps.

[tzyc]

Hi ohthatpatrick,

Thanks for your response, now I can see (B) is actually good.
For (C), I thought from the part "Many of the topics concern material that is not covered in class", that means students (the party concerned) do not have resposnibility to read to do well (Conclusion), because the third party (maybe teacher) has the responsibility to cover in the class(Premise). The teacher has responsibility to teach the material in the class but they did not, so the students do not have to do reading to do well in the class.
I see (B) is good, but still wonder whether (C) is OK if use the above thoughts.
One problem I can think of is, they did not mention the third party explicitly, so that does not match the original stimuli? And maybe the content of responsibility is different between the third party and the student? (teach and to do well)

[ohthatpatrick]

Oh, nice. Yeah, I see now how (C) was making some sense to you. But, you are correct, there's no way LSAT would want or expect us to bring in that "well, it's the TEACHER'S responsibility" idea, especially since the original stimuli made it explicitly clear that the wastewater was someone else's responsibility.