Chap 7 Flashcards
Types of Flaws
1
Q
Bad Conditional Reasoning.
A
- The Misreads Conditions
- The author is just bad at conditional reading. It’s sad really. Bad Conditional Reasoning occurs when the author reads the conditionals supplied in the promises incorrectly.
-
Take this example:
- **if you ride a wild horse, you are an adventurous sort. all adventurous sorts desire the thrill of the new. Therefore, if you desire the thrill of the new. Therefore, if you desire thrill of the new, you must have ridden a wild horse.
-
Take this example:
- Play by play
- There are conditional Premises.
- Crazy person conclusions something by reading the conditional premises backwards without negating.
- There are conditional premises
- Crazy person concludes something by negating the conditional premises and reading it forwards.
- There are conditional Premises.
- Another example:
- The premises yield the following conditional chain:
- wild horse →adventurous sort→ thrill of new.
- The conclusion then states:
- thrill of new→ wild horse.
- Blasphemy! the author read the conditional chain backwards without negating! Never trust that the author will read conditionals correctly. They routinely mess it up.
- The premises yield the following conditional chain:
- Answer Choice Example:
- “Mistakes something that is necessary to bring out a situation for something that in itself is enough to bring about that situation.
- Answer Choice Keywords:
- Necessary/Precondition/required
- sufficient/ Enough/ ensure
2
Q
Bad Causal Reasoning:
A
- Remember Those Omitted Options:
- The vast majority of causal conclusions on the LSAT are bad. Looking for Bad Causal Reasoning is really just looking for causal reasoning- as soon as you see it, the omitted Options should start popping into your head.
- LOOPHOLE: What is one of the Omitted Option is the case?
- The Play-by Play
- Crazy person sees that two things are correlated.
- Crazy person concludes that one of those things is causing the other.
- Answer Choice:
- Mistakes the cause of a particular phenomenon for the effect for the effect of that phenomenon.
- Answer choice Keywords:
- Effect/results
- Cause/Causal
- Two things occur in conjunction
- one thing happens after another.
- coincidence
3
Q
Whole to Part/ Part it whole
A
- Part (≠) Wholes
- Imagine that you have the best kind of pie, a pumpkin pie. you cut a normally proportioned piece of pie for yourself. That piece of the pie is vaguely triangular, right? Now you turn to a friend and tell them that since this piece of pie is triangular, the whole pie is triangular. The friend you say this to is no longer your friend.
- The play by play
- Situation 1:
- Crazy person says a member of a category has a property.
- Crazy person concludes that the category itself also has that property.
- Situation 2:
- Crazy person says a category has a property
- Crazy person concludes that a member of that category also has that property.
- Situation 1:
- LOOPHOLE: What if whole don’t necessarily equal parts?
- Answer Choice Example:
- Assuming that because something is true of each of the parts of a whole it is true of the whole itself.
- Answer Choice keywords:
- Individuals members of a group
- Parts of a whole
- Group as a whole
4
Q
Overgeneralization
A
- Part (≠) All the Parts:
- Let’s return to our pumpkin pie. Imagine you cut yourself a generous piece of pie. It’s about the size and shape of your palm. Then you turn to your last remaining friend and tell them their piece is also the size of your palm. They look done ar their piece. you then say that all the pieces in the world are the size of your palm. No friends left.
- Overgeneralization takes something small and turns it into something big. it occurs when you have primes about something specific- say, a hot temperature. A temperature could be hot, could be pleasantly temperate. To overgeneralize, you take a premise about hot temperatures and conclude about temperatures in general.
- Part ≠ All the Parts
- LOOPHOLE: What if we cant generalize from this one thing to a bunch of other of other thing?
- A collection of overgeneralized Pairs:
- These pairs overgeneralize a part of a spectrum to everything on that spectrum.
- Small Premises
- {adjective} + thing
- Big Conclsuion
- thing
- Small Premises
- cold rooms
- Big Conclusions
- rooms
- Small Premises
- moderate caffeine intake
- Big Conclusions
- Caffeine intake
- Small Premises
- These pairs overgeneralize a part of a category to all the parts of a category.
- Small Premises
- one category
- Big Conclusion
- All category members
- Small Premises
- Grover Cleveland
- Big Conclusion
- all forgettable presidents
- Small Premises
- Comic Sans
- Big Conclusion
- any other font.
- Small Premises
- These pairs overgeneralize a part of a spectrum to everything on that spectrum.
- These pairs overgeneralize a part of a spectrum to everything on that spectrum:
- Play by Play
- Crazy person talks about something having a property
- Crazy person concluds that a bunch of other things also have that also have that property.
- Answer Choice Example:
- makes a sweeping generalization… based on evidence drawn from a limited number of atypical cases”
- Answer choice keywords:
- Concludes:
- too general
- generalizing illegitimately
- general claim
- sweeping generalization
- all instances
- Based on:
- limited number
- particular case
- atypical cases
- few instance
- Concludes:
5
Q
Survey Problems:
A
- Surveys on the LSAT are all smoke and mirrors. you should always assume surveys are done with the greatest possible incompetence. Imagine every survey you ever see on this test is conducted by Eric, a freshman in an introductory psychology class. Eric’s not a bad guy, but he’s also 18 and has never conducted a survey before. Here are the mistakes Eric makes.
- Answer Choice Example
- Uses evidence drawn from a small sample that may well be unrepresentative.
- Answer Choice Keywords:
- Small
- Biased
- Unrepresentative
- Sample.
- LOOPHOLES:
- What if the sample was biased, the questions were biased, there are other contradictory survey, people lie on surveys, or the sample the sample is too small.
- The Play By Play
- There’s a survey
- Crazy person concludes things based on the survey
- there are all kinds of silent things wrong with the survey.
6
Q
Possibility (≠) Certainty.
A
- The Power Players are back!!
- Possibility ≠ Certainty comes down to a lack of comfort with ambiguity. It’s fine to say that someone hasn’t proven their conclusion, that it’s not necessarily true. But stop there. Things go wrong then you say that the other person hasn’t proven their conclusion, so their conclusion can’t be true. Facts are affected by the failure of an argument.
- There are two Possibility ≠ Certainty patterns to know and they each come with their own catchphrases!
-
Lack of evidence ≠ Evidence of lacking
-
It’s not necessarily True, so it cannot be true.
- It has not been proven that the lack of snacks caused the Model UN tournament to be poorly attended. It could have been poorly attended because of the growing disillusionment with multi-national bureaucratic institutions. Therefore, the lack of snacks must not have the reason.
-
It’s not necessarily True, so it cannot be true.
- Proof of Evidence ≠ Evidence of Proof.
- It could ve true, so it must be true.
- There is come evidence that playing music turns you into a narcissist. For instance, Both Kanye and Justin Bieber are undeniably narcissists. Therefore, playing music must turn people into narcissists.
- It could ve true, so it must be true.
- LOOPHOLES
- What if lack of evidence ≠ evidence of lacking?
- What If proof of evidence ≠ evidence of proof?
- Answer Choice Example
- Confuses an Absence of evidence for a hypothesis with the existence of evidence against the hypothesis.
- Answer choice keywords:
- equating/infers/confuses: -
- merely possible… - actual
- probably true… -certainty
- has not been shown… -not true
- absence of evidence for… the existence of evidence against
7
Q
False Dichotomy
A
- **There are more than two options.
- A false Dichotomy pretends there are only tow option when there really could be more.
- There are two ways False Dichotomies go wrong:
- Limiting a spectrum
- Limiting options
-
Limiting a spectrum
-
On a spectrum, you can go up, go down, or stay the same. Spectrum limiting authors pretend there are only two options when there are really three: up, down or unchanged. Here are the two tricks to seeing through every limited spectrum.
- Not More (≠) Less
- Not Less (≠) more
- Example: The quality of the orange zest didn’t deteriorate overnight, so it must have improved.
-
On a spectrum, you can go up, go down, or stay the same. Spectrum limiting authors pretend there are only two options when there are really three: up, down or unchanged. Here are the two tricks to seeing through every limited spectrum.
-
Limiting Options:
- Limiting options is a little more tricky than limited a spectrum. Limiting option pretends that there are only two options when there could be more. We know that thing s can stay the same in a spectrum, but sometimes the LSAT will play word games with is to make is think that they have legit limited the field to two options when they actually haven’t. Check out the following examples of limiting option:
- Example: My career options include becoming an astronaut and becoming a personal assistant. I’ve decided I’m afraid of space, I’m going to be personal assistant.
- “include” is the keyword here. I might have more options than just becoming an astronaut or a personal assistant, so it’s invalid to conclude that I must become a personal assistant
- LOOPHOLE: What if there are more than just two options?
- The Play by Play:
- Crazy person outlines two possible options.
- (This step is absent when limiting s spectrum)
- Crazy person eliminates one of the options.
- Crazy person concludes the second option must be the case.
- Crazy person outlines two possible options.
- Answer Choice Example:
- assumes without warrant that a situation allows only two possibilities.
- Answer Choice Keywords:
- Excludes alternative explanation only two possibilities
8
Q
Straw Man
A
- Straw Man arguments “respond” to an opponent by “mishearing” what was said was said to them. They respond to something entirely different, something entirely different, something so outlandish that it’s easy to dismiss out hand.
- Check out an example:
- Kasra: We need to create a more reliable schedule for feeding the alligators on the preserve. It’s dangerous for us to enter the pen when the alligators are hungry.
- Thomas: So what you’re really saying is that we should let we should let the alligators get their own food whenever they want! That’s even more dangerous than leaving them hungry. I should give the alligators your job.
- Notice that Kasra did say the alligators should feed themselves. Thomas distorted what Kasra said to make Kasra’s point easier to take down. That’s the Straw Man move.
- When Thomas oof the moment starts his rebuttal with “so what you’re really saying is …” or “so what you mean is….” you might as well have a neon STRAW MAN ARGUMENT sign blinking above the stimulus. Straw is harder to spot when those key words arent present, so always look out for a mismatch between the first speaker’s real argument and what the second and what the second speaker is talking about.
- LOOPHOLE: What if what they said has nothing to do with the claim they’re pretending to respond?
-
The play by play:
- A sane person makes a claim.
- Crazy person responds to an entirely different claim, but pretends that respond to the sane person.
- Answer choice Example:
- misdescribing the… position, thereby making it easier to challenge”
- Answer choice Keyword: -
* misdescribes easier to challenge
- Answer choice Keyword: -
9
Q
Ad Hominem
A
- Bad Proponent (≠) Bad Argument
- Ad Hominem premises insult the proponent of a position, but then the conclusion challenges the truth of the position itself. The problem is that proponents don’t affect the truth/ falsity of their position.
- Let me tell you a story: (Look at below picture)
- Ad Hominem premises insult the proponent of a position, but then the conclusion challenges the truth of the position itself. The problem is that proponents don’t affect the truth/ falsity of their position.
- The Play-By Play:
- Sane person makes a claim,
- Crazy person talks about how the sane person is somehow awful,
- Crazy person concludes that the sane person claim is false.
- Answer Choice example:
- “rejects a claim by attacking the proponents of the claim rather than addressing the claim itself
- LOOPHOLE: What if this person’s character/motivation doesn’t affect the truth?
- Answer choice Keywords:
- impugns/questions/attacks:
- character/motives
- proponents
- impugns/questions/attacks:
- rather than:
* addressing arguments
* claim/conclusion
- rather than:
10
Q
Circular Reasoning
A
- Play by Play
- Crazy person concludes something
- Crazy person supplies premises that assume the conclusion is already true.
- Why is Circular Reasoning circular? Because any attempt to prove it otherwise has failed due to the fact that Circular Reasoning is circular.
- A circular argument assumes the conclusion is true before doing the work of proving it so. Often, circular arguments rule out objections to the conclusion simply because those objects are incompatible with the conclusion. Yeah, you read that right. They say an objection must not be true because the objection disproves the conclusion, assuming there’s no way this conclusion can be wrong. This nonsense, of course. It’s the stimulus author’s job to prove the conclusion without dirty circular tricks like this.
- Circular Reasoning derives much of its difficulty from its language. Here’s an example of how a circular wording game might play out:
- Answer choices examples.
- Presupposes:
- seeks to establish
- sets out to prove
- the truth of the claim
- Restates:
- claim/conclusion
- Premises
- Presupposes:
11
Q
Equivocation
A
- Homonyn Unleashed:
- The Play-by Play
- Crazy person uses a word or idea, intending one of its possible meaning.
- Crazy person concludes something using the other possible meaning of the word or idea.
- Hilarity ensues.
- Imagine you’re talking to someone you just met at a networking mixer (blech) since you don’t have any friends left after Overgeneralization. You start telling this person about how great your arms look after this new workout plan. Your arms are just on point, top shape. Then you conclude that your top-notch arms mean you’re ready to intervene in a complex foreign political conflict you don’t truly understand. The mixer person is never going to become you, new friend.
- You started off your argument using the word “arm” to discuss the thing that are attached to hands and then you conclude that arguments as if you initially introduced “arms” to mean things like tanks and machine guns. Like serious! This is a thing people actually fo in a subtler was on the LAST and in real life.
-
Equivocation happens when the author changes the meaning of a work throughout an argument.
- You have to be on your toes to catch Equivocation. At first fkance, it may look like nonsense words. Look closer. Put yourself in the either’s shoes. Tune in to where the author thought they were going, and you’ll learn to live Equivovation.
- Equivocation may also seem like a deliberate pun. But fun puns don’t get a reasoning pass on the LAST. Any time a word changes in meaning, its Equivocation.
- Loophole: What we shouldn’t let words change in meaning.
- Answer Choice Example.
- Relies on two different uses of the term
- Answer Choice Keywords
- term/word
- imprecise/ ambiguous/ vague
- two different senses
12
Q
Appeal Fallacies
A
- Opinion (≠) Fact
- The Play-by Play
- Crazy person says that a person or group believes something.
- Crazy person concludes that thing must be true,
- Appeal Fallacies are about turning someone’s opinion into a fact. This often happens in two ways.
- Invalid appeal to authority
- Invalid appeal to public opinion.
- Answer Choice Example:
- cites the evidence of.. indirect support of a claim that lies outside their area of expertise.
- Answer Choice Keywords:
- appeals to/cites: outside their area of expertise
13
Q
Irrelevant!
A
- The Incoherent Yelling stage of LSAT.
- Irrelevant occurs when the premises are entirely unrelated to the conclusion.
- Let’s have some fun.
- Current efforts to recapture the grizzly bear on the losses at Sunbird Acres are misguided. While the bear did maul a number of residents, bears have long been appreciated by zoologists and the general public as beautiful creatures. The beauty of the grizzly bear has been documented extensively, as in literalbearsimjealousof.tumblr.com
- Answer Choice Example:
- used irrelevant facts to justify a claim
- Answer Choice Keywords
- irrelevant
- Not relevant
14
Q
Percentages (≠) Numbers
A
- They’re Not Friends (Percentages (≠) Numbers)
- The Play-by-Play
- Crazy person say, “A percentage went up!”
- Crazy person concludes that the associated real number also went up.
- Or
- Crazy person says,”A real number went up!”
- Crazy person concludes that the associated percentage also went up.
- Or
- Premises about numbers (≠) almost never lead to conclusions about percentage (%) and vice versa.
- A rising percentage doesn’t necessarily imply a rising number and vice versa. Why? Whenever an argument mentions numbers and percentages, there’s one big thing they’re purposefully not mentioning: group size.
- How how bad things happen:
- Tariq sold 1,000 more (#) yo-yos today than he did yesterday. Therefore, his share of the market (%) must have risen considerably.
- Tariq share of the world yo-yo marker (%) rose from 10% yesterday to 20% today. Therefore, he must have sold many more yo-yos (#) today he did yesterday.
- Why is this bad? Because these conclusions only work when the overall group size is just right. If the total number of yo-yos sold in the world (group size) changes inconveniently, these claims about Tariq don’t have to be true.
- Answer Choice Example:
- takes no account of the relative frequency of… in the population as a whole.
- Answer Choice Keywords
- Percentages
- absolute numbers
- relative frequency
15
Q
False Starts
A
- The two groups are always inconveniently different.
- Imagine you’re research comparing two groups: One exercise and one doesn’t. you get results saying the exercise group is healthier. It’s easy to assume they’re healthier because of the exercise, right? But therein lies the trap! There could be a crucial difference between the two groups besides exercise.
- False Starts researches always assume that the two groups are the same in all respect except the ones called out as part of the study. Despite the reseacher’s assumption of being different. Here are a few possible differences that the researchers ignored:
- The two groups are always inconveniently different.
- Play by Play:
- There’s a study with two groups.
- The crazy researcher assumes the two groups are the same in all respects except those pointed out as part of the study.
- Crazy researcher concludes that the difference in the study results are due to the one key difference the study is focusing on.
- LOOPHOLE: What if the two groups were different in a key respect?
