LSAT and Law School Admissions Forum

Get expert LSAT preparation and law school admissions advice from PowerScore Test Preparation.

 Administrator
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 8919
  • Joined: Feb 02, 2011
|
#23141
Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the reasoning-CE. The correct answer choice is (D)

The stimulus presents certain observations. First, that short children have difficulty reaching high shelves, and tend to become short adults. Second, tall children can reach high shelves easily, and tend to become tall adults. It seems that the ability to reach high shelves during childhood is correlated with height during adulthood. From this correlation, the stimulus concludes that if we somehow improve short childrens' ability to reach high shelves, then perhaps they will become tall adults. Implicit in this reasoning is that shortness in adulthood is somehow caused by the inability to reach high shelves during childhood. Hence, the argument reasons, if we remove the cause (the difficulty in reaching high shelves during childhood), then we can remove the effect (shortness in adulthood). The problem with this reasoning is that there is no indication that the correlation between difficulty in reaching high shelves during childhood and adult shortness reflects any sort of causal relationship. A more plausible explanation is that shortness during childhood is common to both observed effects—difficulty in reaching shelves during childhood, and shortness as an adult.

Answer choice (A) The argument does not make an error in generalization. It does not reason that since a smaller subset of a larger group has a certain characteristic, then that larger group also has that characteristic.

Answer choice (B) The argument is not circular. There is a very definite logic behind the argument that goes beyond simply restating its premises as its conclusion, since it clearly tries to make a causal connection. Unfortunately, the argument fails to do so, because the causal connection is unwarranted.

Answer choice (C) The argument does not point to an exceptional case, nor does it seek to refute a generalization, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. The stimulus makes this very mistake—it erroneously infers from the correlation between difficulty in reaching high shelves during childhood and subsequent adult shortness, that the two are causally related. There is no indication, however, that the two are in fact causally related.

Answer choice (E) The argument does not point out any lack of evidence for any proposition. Neither does it infer anywhere that this absence of evidence is evidence of absence for a certain proposition.
 powerguy
  • Posts: 21
  • Joined: Oct 05, 2012
|
#6008
Question #29.

The conclusion uses a conditional indicator 'if'. However, the correct answer, D, says that the argument is causal? I am a bit confused. Why is it so?

Powerguy!
 Steve Stein
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 1153
  • Joined: Apr 11, 2011
|
#6031
Hi Powerguy,

Good question. "If" is indeed a conditional indicator, but in this case, look at what the author is saying: all we need to do is teach short children to reach high things, and they will be less likely to become short adults!

In other words, the author looks at the correlation between difficulty reaching things, and the prospect of becoming a short adult, and presumes that the first causes the second.

I hope that's helpful! Let me know whether it's clear--thanks!

~Steve
 DesignLaw806
  • Posts: 12
  • Joined: May 21, 2019
|
#64990
Cause and effect without any explicit indicators in the stimulus seems to be my weakness. How is one to deduce a cause and effect relationship implicitly based on the happening of occurrences in the stimulus?
 Brook Miscoski
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 418
  • Joined: Sep 13, 2018
|
#65008
DesignLaw,

In this case, there are words/concepts like "become" and "more likely" that can be associated with causation or correlation. Conceptually, the argument is saying that you can make children grow into taller adults by making them stretch, which is causal. A combination of noticing words that are associated with causal reasoning and thinking about the concept that is expressed can help you identify causal reasoning. By your description, you are too focused on finding an explicit indicator, and that has gotten you away from looking at the whole concept. The indicator words are preparation--to get you looking for the concepts. Now, try reading a bit more broadly.

Get the most out of your LSAT Prep Plus subscription.

Analyze and track your performance with our Testing and Analytics Package.