I’m confused pg 282

[yrresnik]

Curiously the LSAT believes question one is integral to your knowledge of the paragraph as a whole because answering questions three and 4 rely on the assumption Of question number one which is that the author agrees with 2nd anthropologists argument.
I don’t know y this would pass the fact test of must be true the only evidence offered here is that the author argues with the first anthropologist and doesn’t argue with the second.
Don’t get me wrong I could see why his tone could be interpreted as supportive but not why it has to be which is in my understanding essential to must be true questions
My point is determining the tone here seems relative and if it’s relative it’s subjective
Shouldn’t Anything implicit in a must be true have the characteristic of a combination answer (pg 209) which would prove it undoubtably?
Thanks in advance

[KelseyWoods]

Hi yrresnik!

I'll try to address all your concerns with this question and identifying author's tone questions in general. Just to be clear, "implicit" just means that something has been implied, but not expressly stated. So you are correct that the author does not explicitly state that he agrees with the anthropologists in the 3rd paragraph, but his acceptance of them is implied because he provides their evidence without any hint of disagreement, skepticism, hesitancy, etc. (which is also a good reason to eliminate answer choices (B), (C), (D), and (E)!).

Furthermore, it isn't inconsequential that the author counters the view presented by the anthropologists in the 1st paragraph, but does not offer any criticism of the view of the anthropologists in the 3rd paragraph. This is actually a fairly common argument presentation technique that LSAT authors use, both in Reading Comprehension and in Logical Reasoning. In LR, you've probably seen it in arguments which start with some version of "Some people say..." and then the author goes on to argue against whatever "some people say." In RC, it can work in a similar way, as it does here if we focus on the structure of this passage. The 1st paragraph introduces us to the viewpoint of "some anthropologists," the 2nd paragraph presents evidence which calls into question the viewpoint in the 1st paragraph, and the 3rd paragraph presents the viewpoint of "many anthropologists" which accounts for that 2nd paragraph problem in the theory of the 1st paragraph anthropologists. When you think about the structure of the passage as a whole (which is important when considering author's viewpoint!), you see that the author presents one view, finds a problem with it, and then presents another view which solves that problem. That's pretty strong evidence that the author implicitly accepts the view of the 3rd paragraph anthropologists. Their view doesn't have the same problem that he identified in the view of the 1st paragraph anthropologists and he has not presented any problems with their view.

I'm not totally sure what you mean by the tone being subjective if we're determining it relative to the author's tone toward the 1st paragraph anthropologists. As I hope I clarified in my structure analysis, it's not just comparing his view toward the 3rd paragraph anthropologists to the 1st paragraph anthropologists it's the whole structure of the argument that we're taking into account. And in a certain sense, RC is never going to be quite as mathematical as the Logic Games. We'll always have to settle for the best answer out of the 5 that we've been given; we're always looking for the answer choice that "most accurately describes the author's position." Sometimes this can feel a little subjective. But that's why we have tools for recognizing incorrect answers (sometimes getting rid of them is easier than finding the correct answer) and for analyzing key passage components (focusing on those VIEWSTAMP elements helps us stay on track those big picture elements which don't often come from just a sentence or 2).

Identifying an author's tone can be tricky! You often need to take into account the passage as a whole (including structure, author's viewpoint, main point, etc.). So a Combination Answer in a question like this doesn't come from directly adding 2 statements together; it comes from adding the whole passage together. That's why tone is a component of VIEWSTAMP. It may help to review the section on tone in the earlier VIEWSTAMP chapter as it really can be a tricky concept to master.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[yrresnik]

Thanks for taking the time to answer.
Bottom line is your obviously right about the lsacs expectation of you to be able to determine the tone as part of the passage structure ( The book itself points this out on page 57 ) . I guess what got me tripped up and I believe is a mistake on the book/David’s part is that the book classifies “tone” / “authors perspective” qs as MBT however this is different from all the other must be true question types and is more similar to the “most supported question type” Now on page 201 you guys do mention most supported questions in the title of the section but you don’t go on to discuss it and it’s contrast to MBT andwhich is mainly if I remember from the logical reasoning book obviously the most supported question won’t always pass the fact test (“ the correct answer to a must be true question can always be proven by referring to the fact stated in the passage”). Please let me know if I’m in error As always thank you for answering ( correspondence about technique is a great way to make the LSAT studying process fun )

Yr

[Jeremy Press]

Hi yrresnik,

It's always important to pay attention to the specific language of the question stem when determining which specific model to use for a question. While it's generally true that most tone and perspective questions, because of their wording, will fit the more robust Must Be True model, this particular question does not. Notice it calls for an answer that "most accurately describes the author's position." Language in a question stem seeking the "most accurate" description fits more comfortably within the "Most Strongly Supported" model, and you will thus be able to most profitably answer the question by applying insights from that model.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy