#4 - Juan: Unlike the ancient Olympic games on which they

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (D)

Juan opposes the presence of professional athletes in the modern Olympics because of the unfair material advantage they have over amateurs, which supposedly violates the spirit of fairness essential to the games. His conclusion assumes that access to financial resources helps improve athletic performance. If there were no noticeable correlation between the two, then the spirit of fairness would not be violated and his conclusion would be illogical. Answer choice (D) focuses on this gap between the premise and conclusion of the argument and is therefore correct.

Answer choice (A): Just because the modern Olympics has fewer professional than amateur athletes does not mean that the inclusion of professional athletes conforms to the spirit of fairness essential to the games. Because professional athletes can still enjoy an unfair advantage over their amateur counterparts, this answer choice does not weaken the argument and is incorrect.

Answer choice (B): Since in some events the best few competitors are professionals, we cannot rule out the possibility that their superiority is due to access to superior financial and material resources. Because this answer choice is consistent with the author’s conclusion, it does not weaken the argument and is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): Even if the ancient Greeks were unfamiliar with the distinction between amateur and professional athletes, they could have ensured that the games are fair in other ways. Furthermore, Juan’s argument is about the modern Olympics, not the ancient ones. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. See discussion above.

Answer choice (E): This answer choice strengthens the proposition that amateur athletes are at a material disadvantage when compared to professionals. Because your goal is to weaken the argument and not strengthen it, this answer choice is incorrect.

[sdb606]

How could it be D and not C? D contradicts the stimulus which says, "it is unlikely that the amateurs will ever offer a serious challenge to professionals." Sounds pretty unfair to me. I thought you weren't supposed to weaken the premises in a Weaken question. Only weaken the link between premises and conclusion.

I picked C because if ancient Olympics did not distinguish amateur and professional, they did not have a concept of unfairness if an amateur competes against a professional. And modern Olympics are based on ancient Olympics according to the stimulus if C were true, modern Olympics also wouldn't have that concept, weakening the idea that it would be unfair for amateurs and professionals to compete.

[Robert Carroll]

Sdb,

Although I've heard from many sources outside PowerScore that it's not permissible to weaken a premise for a Weaken answer choice, I recognize that that's not true, and we at PowerScore don't claim it. In Lesson 3 in the Online Student Center, the additional reading includes the following sentence: "In practice, almost all correct LSAT Weaken question answers leave the premises untouched." So weakening a premise is fine.

Further, I'm not sure answer choice (D) directly contradicts the premise. Juan considers something unlikely, so Juan apparently recognizes that he's not 100% certain that premise is correct. Answer choice (D) provides information that shows that Juan would have formed a different opinion is he had more knowledge.

Answer choice (C) has nothing to do with the argument. Juan's conclusion is about fairness. Whether a categorization in the modern Olympics would make sense to the original Greeks is irrelevant unless it has something to do with fairness. That the ancients didn't have concepts of amateur and professional says nothing about whether they had a concept of fairness that the modern Olympics would violate.

Robert Carroll