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General questions relating to LSAT Logical Reasoning.
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 Seeker
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#94886
In an argument like

Soft drinks are bad for dental health. Therefore, the government is justified in banning soft drinks.

Is the following statement an assumption?

The government is justified in banning anything that is bad for dental health.
 Robert Carroll
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#94915
Seeker,

That seems like a good sufficient assumption for the argument.

It might even qualify as a necessary assumption - see the discussion at the bottom of this thread for more: viewtopic.php?p=94914#p94914

It's relatively rare for Assumption (that is, Necessary Assumption) correct answer choices to be so strong, but it's all about context - is this strong a statement needed by the argument? If so, that's fine for a Necessary Assumption question.

Robert Carroll
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#95145
Thank you Robert!

I get that it is a sufficient assumption.

If the context is just this - one premise and one conclusion - can we call it a necessary assumption as well?

If we negate it, we get "the government is not justified in banning somethings that are bad for dental health". Does this weaken the conclusion?

I think it does because the conclusion is drawn with 100% certainty.
 Rachael Wilkenfeld
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#95178
Hi seeker,

The negation of your assumption would be that the "government is not necessarily justified in banning some things that are bad for dental health", or phrased differently "there are some things that are bad for dental health that the government is not justified in banning." Since your assumption said the government is justified in banning anything bad for dental health, the negation would have to be that there is at least one thing that the government is not justified in banning. That doesn't necessarily hurt this argument because soft drinks could or could not be the sort of thing the government is justified in banning here.

A better necessary assumption would be "there is at least one thing that is bad for dental health that the government would be justified in banning." There, your negation would be that there are NO things bad for dental health that the government would be justified in banning. That negation would hurt the argument, and thus it is a necessary assumption that there are at least some things that harm dental health.

Hope that helps!
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#95283
Hi Rachael,

I am sorry for responding late to this.

Thank you for your detailed response!

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