LSAT Question Explanation
PT 105, Section 1, Question 17
Most Strongly SupportedArgument structure
Etiquette doesn't apply when you're alone.
Manners are social in nature, morals are not necessarily social in nature.
Explanation
This is pretty abstract wording, so take your time with the stimulus.
This is a flawed argument because etiquette was never mentioned in the stimulus, but the author concluded that when alone, the rules of etiquette don't apply. The proper conclusion based on the terms in the evidence would have been something like "when alone manners don't apply," so we can infer that if no manners then no etiquette. Or the contrapositive, if etiquette then manners.
Similar to above, the evidence is technically about whether a situation is social or not, not whether someone is alone. So we can infer from the conclusion that a social situation is one where an individual is not alone.
Also, the stimulus says morals aren't necessarily social, so we can infer that sometimes morals could apply in non-social situations.
Answer choices
This aligns with the last inference in the explanation above. Morals can apply outside of social situations, so they sometimes apply when there aren't other people around, so you could do something immoral without harming anyone.
We have no idea about any relationship between morals and etiquette.
This isn't supported, the stimulus just says morals are not necessarily social in nature. They could apply in a social or non-social situation.
The stimulus never talked about the relative importance of these ideas.
The stimulus said morals could be social or non-social. Similarly to (C), this answer choice says they can't be social.