Government official: Clearly, censorship exists if we, as citizens, are not allowed to communicate what we are ready ...
Julie-VAugust 7, 2019
Flaw Clarification
Hi LSAT Max,
Can someone confirm that I accurately grasped the flaw of the stimulus and answer choice (D)? This was a challenging question and the explanation cleared up some confusion.
Is the flaw seen by the negation of the necessary condition, which is given through another condition that isn't the original sufficient conditions or its negations? Which is why we don't just negate?
Thanks!
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The argument provides us with two different sufficient conditions to prove censorship (not being allowed to communicate or not permitting other citizens to access our communications).
No communication or no access - >censorship
We can think of the structure of this as
A or B - >censorship
Public unwillingness, which is brought up in the conclusion, is something that is totally different from either not being allowed to communicate or not permitting other citizens to access our communications. We can think of it as C.
Since C is neither A nor B, the argument is essentially saying
A or B - >censorship
Therefore, C (not A and not B) - >not censorship
Thus, the argument is saying that if we fail the sufficient conditions, we fail the necessary condition, and this is flawed logic.
(D) says, "There is no doubt that a deed is heroic if the doer risks his or her own life to benefit another person. Thus an action is not heroic if the only thing it endangers is the reputation of the doer."
Diagramming (D), we have
Risk own life - >heroic deed
Therefore, not risk own life (only dangering reputation) - >not heroic deed
(D) has the same flawed structure as the stimulus. It's failing the sufficient condition and saying that the necessary condition is failed because of that, and that's improper logic.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any questions!
