October 2010 LSAT Section 1 Question 1

By referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "purely programmatic" (line 49) in nature, the author mo...

Ceci_Perez on March 17, 2021

Question 9

Hi, I have a question about #9 - Why is (a) completely irrelevant? If other environmental organizations gave copies of the book to the same people, then would the Earth Association really be able to justly claim credit for converting at least 2,000 people to the environmentalist cause in one month? Thanks in advance!

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Victoria on April 11, 2021

Hi @Ceci_Perez,

Happy to help!

Answer choice (A) is irrelevant because the conclusion is not dependent on this assumption. If answer choice (A) said that no other environmental organization gave away copies of the book to those same 2,000 people, then negating this would affect the conclusion.

As written, if we negate answer choice (A), it does not necessarily cause the conclusion to fall apart. What if the other environmental organization is located in a different city? What if the other environmental organization gave out fewer copies and to a different group of people?

Overall, negating answer choice (A) is not enough to cause the argument to fall apart. Therefore, it is not the assumption upon which the argument depends and is irrelevant for our purposes.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.