LSAT Question Explanation
PT 108, Section 3, Question 16
PrinciplesExplanation
This stimulus gives us a principle, which is that to act responsibly in a professional capacity you need to make decisions based on information that you reasonably believe to be complete and accurate.
Note that the principle gives us a necessary condition for responsible behavior, but no sufficient condition for responsible behavior. So it will be impossible to prove that someone acted responsibly, but we could prove that someone acted irresponsibly if they violate the necessary condition for responsible behavior.
Answer choices
We don't know if Peggy acted responsibly. We were given no condition that would guarantee someone is acting responsibly.
Similar to (A), we don't know for sure if Mary acted responsibly, because we don't have a sufficient condition to know if someone is acting responsibly. This answer choice is more tempting because Mary does seem to fulfill the necessary condition of evaluating the information on which her decision is based, but it's just a necessary condition.
Here's a similar example: A job posting for a position that requires a bachelor's degree. So a bachelor's degree is a necessary condition to get the job. But just because someone has a bachelor's degree obviously doesn't guarantee that they'll get the job.
This conforms to the principle. Toril did not consider all of the information when making their decision, which was the necessary condition to be considered to act responsibly. So they did not act responsibly.
We don't know if Conchita was irresponsible here because we don't know if she made an effort to consider all the relevant/accurate information.
(E) is tempting because it seems to violate the necessary condition, but the principle was limited to *professional 8 situations. This answer choice is about going on vacation.