June 2010 LSAT Section 1 Question 1

Jim's teacher asked him to determine whether a sample of a substance contained iron. Jim knew that magnets attract ir...

Julie-V on August 20, 2019

Answer Explanation

Hi LSAT Max, I'm not sure if I went about this question accurately, so any explanation would be helpful. Also, how would the relationship between the magnets and iron be diagrammed (if they're even supposed to be), and how can we use the information to conclude the right answer? Thank you in advance for the help!

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Irina on August 28, 2019

@Julie,

Jim knows that magnets attract iron.

Iron -> attracted by the magnet

Substance became attracted to the magnet.

attracted by the magnet

He concluded that it contains iron:

iron

He committed a fallacy known as affirming the consequent:

attracted -> iron

This is false, we can only conclude that:

~attracted -> ~ iron.

The fact that a substance is attracted cannot guarantee that this is iron, the argument thus fails to consider this possibility that magnets attract other substances as expressed in (D).

Does that make sense?

Let me know if you have any further questions.