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Course: LSAT > Unit 1
Lesson 10: Reading Comprehension - Worked Examples- Law passage overview | Cosmic Justice (paired passages)
- Main point | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Recognition | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Inferences about views | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Inferences about info | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Principles | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Analogies | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Law passage overview | Copyright
- Main point | Law passage | Copyright
- Purpose of reference | Law passage | Copyright
- Applying to new contexts | Law passage | Copyright
- Humanities passage overview | Music (paired passages)
- Main point 1 | Humanities passage | Music
- Main point 2 | Humanities passage | Music
- Recognition | Humanities passage | Music
- Inferences about views | Humanities passage | Music
- Principles and analogies | Humanities passage | Music
- Additional evidence | Humanities passage | Music
- Primary purpose | Humanities passage | Music
- Science passage overview | The Sun
- Recognition 1 | Science passage | The Sun
- Recognition 2 | Science passage | The Sun
- Organizing info | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 1 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 2 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 3 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about info | Science passage | The Sun
- Social science passage overview | Wool
- Main point | Social science passage | Wool
- Recognition 1 | Social science passage | Wool
- Recognition 2 | Social science passage | Wool
- Inferences about info | Social science passage | Wool
- Inferences about attitudes | Social science passage | Wool
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Inferences about info | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
Watch a demonstration of one way to approach an "inference about information" question about a LSAT reading comprehension law passage. Created by Dave Travis.
Want to join the conversation?
- would you say the length of these ideos is an appropriate amount of time to spend considering a single question?(2 votes)
- Definitely not. On the lsat, there's about 24-29 questions on any given section, and you're given 35 minutes to solve them. That's anywhere from 1.5 ish minutes per problem to 1.2 ish, so 3-4 minutes (which is the video length) is nowhere close to the amount of time you should be spending on a question.(1 vote)
- Why is the correct answer "The extent, if any, to which the murderer's culpability is mitigated by his childhood is beyond the ability of any judge or jury to determine"?(0 votes)
- The other choices were just flat out not stated in passage A (A,B,C) or too strongly worded (E).(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] Passage
A most strongly supports which one of the following inferences regarding the example of
the murderer in passage B? Okay, so what would passage A support regarding the example of
the murderer in passage B. So the murderer might have
had a traumatic childhood but cosmic justice says,
yeah we should take that into account and it
should mitigate the punishment if that murderer's
childhood was, you know, so traumatic that, you
know, it's not really the murderer's fault. But what does passage A
most strongly support? Passage A just tells us
about what cosmic justice is and says, look Seoul says
that cosmic justice is not something that we should attempt because, you know, the judge
and jury can't know everything and shouldn't even try to know everything. So before we look at
our choices we really do need to lock down in our
heads the sort of thing that we're looking for in the choices because if we start looking
at the choices one by one and go down those little rabbit
holes to try to figure out which one might work, comparing
each choice to passage A, we're gonna end up taking a lot of time, time that we don't have, time that is better spent working on other questions. So it's definitely worth
your while to get an idea of what you want, try to
make a prediction of the sort of thing you're looking
for before you start looking. So all that passage A says,
again, is what cosmic justice is and that we should not
attempt cosmic justice because we cannot know everything. Okay so that's what we're looking for, let's look at the choices. Now, A. From the perspective of cosmic justice, the murderer cannot be considered
responsible for his crime. Well, passage A says that
human beings aren't able to determine what is cosmically
just, so that passage doesn't really support a claim like
this. Let's cross it out. B. Once the jury has
convicted the murderer, the judge should be permitted
substantial discretion in determining his punishment. So the judge should be given
discretion, I mean, no, cosmic justice does not
work, and so this discretion is not really what we're looking for. Let's definitely move on.
You know, the judge and jury should not attempt to
mitigate things because cosmic justice is not desirable. C. Recognition of our
common human fallibility should lead us to err in the direction of leniency toward the murderer. Passage A does recognize
human fallibility, or certainly humanity's
inability to know everything. But does passage A say
that because of that, we should err in the
direction of leniency? That originally wasn't mentioned, so that's not really
what we're looking for. D. The extent is any to which
the murderer's culpability is mitigated by his
childhood, okay, is beyond the ability of any judge
or jury to determine. So, we cannot know.
It's beyond our ability. We are not omniscient. That is
what passage A is all about. D is looking really
good. Let's check out E. The murderer's childhood
must be presumed to have been without influence upon
his criminal behavior. I'm not sure either passage
says that, you know, we should presume that
it had no influence. The argument against
cosmic justice says that we cannot know what that influence is, and it should not affect the
way that justice is served according to the process of justice which is what Thomas Seoul is
recommending that we focus on so that humans try to
render justice that way. But nothing stated about presuming that there was no influence. E is wrong. D looks really good, we should
just choose it and move on. And we have figured out good reasons why these other choices are not correct.