Q3 - M: The Greek alphabet must

[rdown2b]

Can someone tell me why b is wrong?

[timmydoeslsat]

P attempts to refute M when responding!

M says that the Greek alphabet must have been invented by some individual who knew writing system X and wanted to record epics of Homer, which would preserve expressions of oral poetry.

P says that it couldn't be true that the Greek alphabet was invented in that manner.

P refutes this by showing that both possibilities point towards absurdity.

P says, well if the individual that wrote down the Homer epics did so for himself, that would not make sense because he apparently knew them well enough to write them down.

And if he did for others, how could that work? They could not read it because he is the one that invented it!

[wj097]

Couldn't decide between D and E, because my paraphrase of the error was "attempts to make M's opinion appear absurd by providing alternative interpretation of the evidence"...

Is E wrong because its not an alternative explanation or that its not an evidence...

Thx.

[ohthatpatrick]

(E) is incorrect because M doesn't really present any evidence. M's entire paragraph is one sentence, and that sentence consists of M's speculation / hypothesis about why the Greek alphabet was invented.

An interpretation of evidence would involve some factual statement and then the author's conclusion about what that means.

For example:
Jane didn't come to school today. Hence, she must be sick.

Here, the author interpreted the evidence that Jane was absent to mean "Jane was sick".

Someone else might say:
Your hypothesis is laughable! Maybe Jane is just on vacation.

That would qualify as an alternative interpretation.

What we got in Q3 was something more like:
Your hypothesis is laughable! Jane has never gotten sick before and has been inoculated against every known disease.

In other words, the second person shot down the first person's explanation without providing an alternative explanation.

We could try to stretch M's paragraph to be
EVIDENCE: a Greek alphabet exists
INTERPRETATION: it was probably invented by someone who knew Phoenician and wanted to record it.

But, again, P just shoots down M's INTERPRETATION. P doesn't provide any alternative explanation for who invented the Greek alphabet or for what reason.

Hope this helps.

[uhdang]

Hi, Patrick.
Thanks for the explanation. I was struggling with this question and your example really helped me out.

One question, is it safe to think that "making it appear absurd" is "pointing out the weakness of the argument" + "a bit of extreme language"? I've encountered some reasoning as to "disputing an argument by stating the flaw or misconception", but never something as "absurd." So, if there wasn't this language of "laughable", would this be unqualified to be "absurd"?

[ohthatpatrick]

I kinda like the way you defined absurdity, but it's actually more specific than "disputing, in an extreme fashion".

There's actually a term, reductio ad absurdum, that describes this time of argument "a reduction to absurdity".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Basically, you show someone that a claim is true by showing that to believe otherwise would lead you into something crazy.

Or you show someone that a claim is false by showing that to believe that claim is true would lead you into something crazy.

So when LSAT uses "absurd/absurdity", you want to see a rebuttal in which someone shows that the implications of believing / not believing something would lead to a contradiction, or a foolish statement, or something the other guy would regret committing himself to (in this case, something "pointless"... as P says, "What would have been the point?")

Here, our dude P is showing that M's statement is absurd because of its implications.

M says that someone invented the Greek alphabet in order to record and preserve the oral poems of Homer that had been passed down for generations ("highly developed tradition").

P is saying,
in order to write them, you had to already know them by memory. So why would you need to write them?

in order to write them down for future generations, they would have to be able to understand your writing. But you're inventing an alphabet, so how would they be able to read them? No one else knows your alphabet!

The 'absurdity' comes from those ending ideas:
"Why would someone write something down if they had already committed it to memory? That's absurd!"

"Why would someone expect future generations to be able to read one's writing if one INVENTED an alphabet that no one else knows? That's absurd!"