#14 - Scientist: A controversy in paleontology centers on

[Adam Tyson]

I think the relationship between standing up and having free use of the hands is more causal than conditional, blade21cn. Let's look at the conditional possibilities:

1. If you stand upright, you have free use of the hands

That's not what the author is saying, because free use of the hands is only made possible, rather than being absolutely required. I'm not sure I would agree that standing upright by definition means that the hands are free, although that certainly isn't much of a stretch.

2. If you have free use of the hands, then you stand upright

Hmmm, maybe. But is standing upright really required? Standing up might make free use possible, but that isn't as strong as saying nothing else does make it possible and that standing is therefore necessary. I think this interpretation is closer, but still a stronger claim than that made by the author.

Causally, though, looks good, because the author uses the active language of "makes" - standing causes the possibility of free use of the hands because it "makes" that possible. So, if I felt so inclined, I would treat this as a causal claim.

Ultimately, though, there is nothing about this argument that makes me think I need to treat it conditionally OR causally. Instead, I simply focus on the timeline. The author argues about what came first, and he has his reasons why he thinks so. We need to weaken that, so we want some evidence that he may have the timeline wrong, and that his evidence may not be good enough. My focus, rather than on a diagram or a causal claim, is strictly on "find some evidence that suggests advanced toolmaking prior to standing up."

We often have a tendency to try to force our analysis into familiar frameworks, and conditional and causal frameworks can quickly become crutches that we lean on too heavily and that end up dragging us down rather than lifting us up (I think my metaphor broke down there somewhere, but stay with me!) If you see them jumping out at you, great, use them! But if you don't see clear conditional or causal indications in the stimulus, don't try to apply them, and instead look at the argument another way, with a more broad view of the overall structure. After all, in LR it's usually fewer than half of all the questions that can be categorized as either conditional or causal, so there's many other ways that we should be going about the business of analyzing them.

[twendell]

Why is it ok to assume an advanced hunting weapon is a tool? While my colloquial understanding of "tool" would include it, I felt uncomfortable assuming that an anthropologist's definition of tool would include an advanced hunting weapon. Is that a jump test makers expect me to make?

[Zach Foreman]

twendell,
Yes, this is a common enough definition that LSAT takers are expected to make this jump. "A tool is an object used to extend the ability of an individual to modify features of the surrounding environment." It is a little challenging since they don't make the jump in any other answer choice.

[lina2020]

Hi PowerScore,

I had trouble deciding between B, D and E when I was working through this question and although I can understand the reason for selecting B, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding why D and E are eliminated.

For D - if free use of hands is the same for those who first stood upright and those who did not, then wouldn't that go against the very premises that the author states in the last sentence of the stimulus to support the conclusion?

For E - I thought this statement directly countered the scientist's premise and would therefore weaken his argument.

Any insight is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Answer D has nothing to do with free use of the hands, lina2020, but is instead about dexterity, an entirely different concept. The argument is not about how good you are with your hands, just whether they are free or unencumbered.

Answer E is about using tools, not making them, and so it also has nothing to do with the argument. Who cares whether a user has to stand upright? We want to know about the people that MADE the tool! Maybe I can teach a dog to use the TV remote, but that doesn't mean the dog can build me a new one!

[lsat_student0543]

I see two ways to weaken the argument: (1) Show prehistoric humans who could stand upright lacking advanced tools & (2) Show prehistoric humans who could not stand upright possessing advanced tools.

Isn't (C) an example of (1)?

[Robert Carroll]

lsat,

(1) doesn't weaken the argument, and in fact is quite consistent with it. The author thinks that prehistoric humans stood upright first. Then we'd expect that standing upright happened, an indeterminate amount of time passed, and THEN humans developed sophisticated tools. In that interim time, we HAVE to find humans who stood upright, but didn't yet have advanced toolmaking. So far from being against the author's argument, the kind of situation in (1) is practically required for the author's argument to work.

Robert Carroll