LSAT Question Explanation
PT 108, Section 3, Question 25
Method of ReasoningArgument structure
The Anthropologist's assumption may not be true.
The analogy about bank cash machines.
Explanation
This stimulus has a lot of information and seems dense on first read. But we're asked about the Primatologist's method of reasoning, and frankly all they did was give an analogy that shows the Anthropologist's reasoning to be unsound. Just because a prediction was accurate doesn't mean that an underlying assumption was definitely true.
So I'm looking for an answer choice that says "argument by analogy" or something similar.
Answer choices
The Primatologist doesn't talk about any facts related to the Anthropologists argument, or say that the Anthropologist's conclusion can't be true. The Primatologist just uses an analogous argument to show that the reasoning of the argument is not sound so the conclusion may not follow.
The Primatologist does offer another argument but it's completely unrelated to the facts of the Anthropologist's argument. It doesn't deny the truth of the Anthropologist's conclusion as a premise.
Here we go. The Primatologist applied the Anthropologist's reasoning to another argument to show that the reasoning is unsound.
The Primatologist never attacks the Anthropologist personally and never indicates that the Anthropologist must consider an analogy between animals and machines. The analogous argument does include machines but the point is to illustrate the Anthropologists faulty logical reasoning.
There is no key term that it's indicated that the Anthropologist misinterpreted.