September 1995 LSAT Section 2 Question 10

A fundamental illusion in robotics is the belief that improvements in robots will liberate humanity from "hazardous a...

AndrewArabie on May 11 at 05:41PM

Answer choice B

I noticed in the stimulus the necessary assumption that maintaining robots is demeaning work so I really liked B initially because the argument certainly assumes that maintaining robots is demeaning work. The problem with B is that the argument doesn't set out to prove the maintenance of robots is demeaning work or that robots create demeaning work, the argument sets out to prove that demeaning work can't be eliminated by robots. Does anyone have a better explanation for why B is wrong? Or if I am right can someone better bolster my argument? Because I can talk myself out of my own explanation at the moment.

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Emil-Kunkin on May 13 at 05:15PM

B describes my absolute least favorite kind of flaw: a circular argument. I actually do like your explanation for why it isn't B quite a lot, although I think there are two other ways I would potentially try.

First, I don't think the argument necessarily assumes that robots create demeaning work per se, it necessarily assumes that working in robots is demeaning, which is quite similar to your explanation. This is a nuanced distinction, but I think it is a real distinction.

My second way to dismiss it would be simply to say that B describes a circular argument, and that the argument we have here, while flawed, is not circular.