LSAT-Section-1-Logical-Reasoning Section One : Logical Reasoning - Practice Questions

Question 253

Ashley: Words like "of" and "upon," unlike "pencil" and "shirt," do not refer to anything. Joshua: I agree; and since such words are meaningless, they should be abandoned.

Joshua's remarks indicate that he interpreted Ashley's statement to imply that

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only words that refer to something have meaning
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words that are not useful are meaningless
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words that refer to something are meaningful
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if a word is not useful, it should be abandoned
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all words that refer to something are useful

Reference / correct answer:

only words that refer to something have meaning

Here’s a question type that used to be more common on the test, the old “crossed-wires” example. One person speaks, the second responds based on a misunderstanding of what was said, and we’re asked to figure out what he was thinking in order to respond the way he did. So, how does Joshua interpret Ashley’s statement? As far as scope shifts go, this one is pretty blatant: Ashley says that the words “of” and “upon” don’t refer to anything. Joshua agrees, and says that because such words are meaningless, they should be abandoned. The logic of Joshua’s response clearly relies on the notion that if a word does not refer to anything, then it’s meaningless. That’s his interpretation of Ashley’s comment (although it’s not what she actually said). That could be the answer, but evidently the test makers found that to be too easy, so instead they went with the contrapositive: “If a word has meaning, then it refers to something.” Option [only words that refer to something have meaning] is the equivalent of this in “only” form.

Question 254

Ethicist: Some would ban cloning on the grounds that clones would be subpeople, existing to indulge the vanity of their "originals." It is not illegal, however, to use one person as a vehicle for the ambitions of another. Some people push their children to achieve in academics or athletics. You do not have to have been born in a test tube to be an extension of someone else's ego.

The assertion that it is not illegal to use one person as a vehicle for another's ambitions is used in the ethicist's argument in which one of the following ways?

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It supports the ethicist's view that society does not value individuality as much as many opponents of cloning think it does.
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It supports the conclusion that forcing children to pursue academic success is not objectionable.
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It is implied by the ethicist's conviction that clones are not subpeople.
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It supports the ethicist's view that vanity's being the motivation for cloning is not enough of a reason to ban cloning.
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It describes a legal position that the ethicist argues should be changed.

Reference / correct answer:

It supports the ethicist's view that vanity's being the motivation for cloning is not enough of a reason to ban cloning.

There seems to be a bunch of them running around somewhere. Anyhow this time we’re asked to determine the role of a statement in the argument, so it’s best to keep our eye out for the argument’s structural components. Some would ban cloning because clones would be a lower class of people designed to indulge the vanity of the original person. The next sentence is the assertion we’re to categorize. It contains the crucial Keyword “however,” which essentially tells us that it will likely contain some kind of refutation of the first claim. And so it does: The counter is that we already use other people as a vehicle for personal ambitions, and it’s by no means illegal to do so. The ethicist provides an example of people who aren’t clones who are used to indulge other’s egos, but for our purposes we’ve already come upon the relevant issue: As the Keyword “however” suggests, the phrase in question supports the idea that using clones for vain purposes is not a sufficient reason to ban cloning.

Question 255

Selena: Asteroid impact on the Earth caused the extinction of the dinosaurs by raising vast clouds of dust, thus blocking the Sun's rays and cooling the planet beyond the capacity of the dinosaurs, or perhaps the vegetation that supported them, to adapt. A worldwide dust layer provides evidence of asteroid impact at approximately the correct time, and a huge crater exists on the edge of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

Trent: That asteroid crater is not large enough for the requisite amount of dust to have been produced. Besides, the extinction of dinosaur species took many years, not just one or two.

So the extinctions must have been due not to asteroid impact on the Earth but to some other kind of cause.

Trent's argument assumes that

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any collision of an asteroid with the Earth would have occurred on a land area rather than an ocean
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dinosaurs in the neighborhood of an asteroid impact but not within the zone of direct impact would have survived such an impact
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any event that takes place over a long period of time has many different kinds of causes
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dust from the impact of an asteroid on the Earth would not have had any cooling effect on the climate
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no more than one large asteroid struck the Earth during the period when the dinosaurs were becoming extinct

LSAT-Section-1-Logical-Reasoning – Section One : Logical Reasoning