Methods of Reasoning Questions - - Question 8

It is often said that people should be rewarded for doing a given job in proportion to the effort it costs them to do...

Silvia July 16, 2020

Why is E wrong?

Hi LSATMax, I was able to narrow the answer choices down to (D) & (E) and ended up choosing (E). I thought that because some people had a greater incentive, then that would mean the principle isn't applied uniformly because if it was, then everyone's incentives would be equal? How can I approach a question like this? Thank you!

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shunhe July 16, 2020

Hi @Silvia,

Thanks for the question! So (E), when it says that the principle under consideration could not be uniformly applied, actually means something different from how you understood it. Basically it’s saying that it is impossible to apply the principle the same way to everyone. So that would have to be something like “but we can’t find out how much effort some people are spending, so it’s impossible to do this for those people.” But that’s not what happens; instead, the author talks about why you might not want to apply this principle because of some of its consequences when you do uniformly apply it to everyone. And that’s what (D) tells us.

I think with these kinds of questions, it’s good to read over the stimulus and then before you go into the answer choices, kind of think about what the answer would be beforehand. How is the argument arguing what it’s arguing? That will help you in a lot of these questions. And look over the “Methods of Reasoning” section, which this question is an example of.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.