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Course: LSAT > Unit 1
Lesson 7: Logical Reasoning – Video lessons- Identify the conclusion | Video lesson
- Identify an entailment | Video lesson
- Strongly supported inferences | Video lesson
- Disputes | Video lesson
- Identify the technique | Video lesson
- Identify the role | Video lesson
- Identify the principle | Video lesson
- Match the structure | Video lesson
- Match principles | Video lesson
- Identify a flaw | Video lesson
- Match flaws | Video lesson
- Necessary assumptions | Video lesson
- Sufficient assumptions | Video lesson
- Strengthen | Video lesson
- Weaken | Video lesson
- Helpful to know | Video lesson
- Explain | Video lesson
- Resolve a conflict | Video lesson
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Match flaws | Video lesson
Watch one way to approach a Matching Flaws question on the Logical reasoning section of the LSAT.
Want to join the conversation?
- The answer A is wrong or miss information. Similar imply that employment or inflation is necessary part of economy, just as contemporary romance novels as necessary part of contemporary novels, so not able to regulate employment or inflation would not able to regulate economy which include employment or inflation.(3 votes)
- When going over the choices, it might be helpful to discuss which common flaw the choices represent, if they do respresent a common flaw. That would be super helpful for studying.(3 votes)
- For these "match the flaw" questions, would it be prudent to, instead of parsing each sentence in each question and response, just label which logical fallacy is being used and then find the answer that has the same logical fallacy? For example, the logical fallacy in this video is a "Part vs. Whole" fallacy. In this flaw, the argument states that because some parts of the whole have a particular characteristic, the whole itself must also have that characteristic. Using this knowledge, it is much quicker to figure out which is the correct answer, because it is the only answer with a "Part vs. Whole" fallacy. So would that not be a better strategy?(1 vote)
- I understand that the answer from B to E are no correct. But I do not understand why the answer A is the answert.
I do not think that to said the word impossibler is enought evidence, even the word impossible is not a verb or a sentence, it is just a opinion.
for me the letter A is could be the answer, but it is weak opinion.(1 vote) - very awkward unproductive question(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] This question asks us the flawed reasoning in
the critic's argument is most similar to that in
which one of the following. That means we're dealing with
a match the flaws question. We'll be presented with
the flawed argument in the stimulus, and then
the answer will exhibit a very similar type flaw. Now, I wanna give you some helpful ways to approach the second
question but if you wanna try it yourself first,
that's totally fine too. So go ahead and pause your video now if you wanna try the question yourself before I explain it, or
just wait three seconds without pausing if you
don't wanna try it yourself. Alright, it often helps for
match the flaw questions if you write the argument down into its conclusion and support. So as we read the stimulus together, I want you to try to locate
what the critic's opinion is and why the critic thinks
that that opinion is true. So the critic says the
contemporary novel is incapable of making important new contributions. The evidence is clear,
contemporary psychological novels have been failures. Contemporary action novels
lack any social significance, and contemporary romance
novels are stale and formulaic. Now note the language
of the first sentence. The critic uses very strong language here. The contemporary novel is incapable of making important new contributions. Great, that's an excellent
candidate for the conclusion especially given that the next sentence explicitly introduces the evidence to us. So, I like to mark conclusions like this. Now we ask ourselves why, why does the arguer believe
that the contemporary novel absolutely can't make
important new contributions? Well, it's because contemporary
psychological novels have been failures, and
contemporary action novels lack any social significance. And contemporary romance novels have these bad qualities listed here. So a great way to identify
an argument's flaw is to look for the gap between the advents and the conclusion. The conclusion only addresses the contemporary novel in general. Anything that falls into the
category of contemporary novel the critic says can't make
important contributions. But this opinion is based on
just a couple specific examples of contemporary novels, like action novels and romance novels. To put it into something visual for you, let's say that this circle represents all of the contemporary novels in the world. And now here, these little circles, would be the action novels and these would be the
psychological novels and these would be the romance novels. But you might be able to
see, they don't necessarily make up all of the contemporary
novels in existence. There could be all of these other kinds of contemporary novels as well, that we just don't know anything about, maybe they're huge successes. Further more, just because
these listed types of novels have failed, doesn't mean that
they need to keep failing. So there are two of the problems that this argument exhibits. So now we're gonna look at the choices, and evaluate them. And we're gonna work through the choices until we find the argument
that exhibits a similar flaw to the one we just uncovered. Choice A, since no
government has been able to regulate either employment
or inflation very closely, it's impossible for any
government to improve its nation's economy. This argument has the same
kind of strong conclusion we see in the passage. It's impossible for any
government to improve its nation's economy, and
this is based on the fact that so far no government
has been able to regulate either specifically
employment or inflation. So this choice is assuming
that there's no other way to improve a nation's economy, just like the passage was
assuming that there's no other kind of contemporary novel
than what was listed. So this is a match, and what a relief because on test day we would pick it and move right
along to the next question. For completion sake
though, let's look at why the other choices are wrong. Choice B, because there has
been substantial progress in recent years in making
machines more efficient, it's only a matter of
time before we invent a perpetual motion machine. Okay, this argument is flawed but not in the same way
that the stimulus is flawed. This choice makes a big jump in saying that because we've made
quite a lot of progress in making machines more
efficient recently, it's inevitable that we're going to invent a perpetual motion machine. That's a big shift in scope
from what has been accomplished to what will be accomplished, so it's flawed but that's
not what we were looking for. Choice C, the essayist
Macaulay was as widely read in his time as Dickens, but
has been neglected since. Thus writers who are popular
today are likely to be forgotten in the future. This argument has a type of conclusion that doesn't work for
what we're looking for. It says that writers who are popular today are likely to be forgotten in the future. So not only is the language not as strong as the language of the
conclusion in the passage, but it's dealing with what
will happen in the future. Whereas the stimulus is about
what contemporary novels are incapable of right now. Moving to choice D, this
politician has not made any proposals for dealing with
the problem of unemployment and thus must not think
the problem is important. We can eliminate this
argument because the shift is between not making
proposals about a problem and not thinking that
the problem is important. Certainly it's a flaw but
again, it's not the same kind of flaw as what we see in the passage. The passage eliminates something general because of two specific examples, we don't see that pattern
happening in choice D. Finally choice E, in
international commerce the corporations that are
best suited for success are large and multinational. Thus small corporations can not compete at the international level. This argument has a great conclusion since it's stating that small
corporations can't compete at the international level, but the evidence doesn't
match what we're looking for. We don't see for example,
two instances in which small corporations can
compete and then a conclusion that says okay, they
just can't ever compete. What we see here is a
flaw of assuming that just because large and
multinational corporations are best suited, that means
that small corporations can't compete at all, and that's different from
what we see in the passage. So to recap, even though
the topics in the choices will usually be different than the topic in the match the flaw
passage, it doesn't matter. Your job is to find the
argument that reasons in a flawed way and in
a way that's similar to how the argument in
the passage reasons. And a good way to do that is
to break down the argument into its conclusion and support, and look for why the argument isn't sound. So have a strong description
of that flaw in your mind so that you don't get
distracted by all of the other flawed arguments in the wrong choices.