Q17 - Meade: People who are injured as a result

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (which principle most undermines)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Govt's are justified in outlawing self-inflicted harm, for the sake of others.
Evidence: Self-inflicted harm also imposes emotional and financial costs to others, since the harmed person has important ties to other people.

Answer Anticipation:
Principle-Weaken is a truly rare bird.

Weakening arguments essentially means "reconcile the EVID with the ANTI-CONC". You can prephrase pretty much every Weaken question by saying, "GIVEN THAT I have to accept this evidence, HOW COULD I ARGUE the anti-conclusion?"

It would mean saying something like "GIVEN THAT [self-inflicted harm also imposes costs on others], HOW WOULD I ARGUE THAT [govt's are NOT justified in outlawing self-inflicted harm]?"

The key to a correct answer is that it takes something we know is true of self-inflicted harm and gets us closer to concluding the government is NOT justified in outlawing self-inflicted harm.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Nothing about whether govt. outlawing is justified.

(B) Nothing about whether govt. outlawing is justified.

(C) "Behavior does NOT impose costs on others, govt NOT justified". This doesn't help us because this rule would NOT apply to self-inflicted harm. We know that self-inflicted harm DOES impose costs on others.

(D) YES. This is about "laws that limit personal freedom", which IS applicable to outlawing self-inflicted harm. "Preventing harm to others" was definitely the author's reason for outlawing (he even says "To protect the interests of others … govts are justified in outlawing"), and this principle says that "Protecting the interest of others" is NOT sufficient justification for "outlawing self-inflicted harm".

(E) This strengthens the idea that we should outlaw self-inflicted harm. Plus it doesn't

Takeaway/Pattern: The classic form of a Weaken idea is something that reconciles the EVIDENCE with the ANTI-CONC. (D) reconciles "self-inflicted harm also causes harm to others" with "we are NOT (yet) justified in outlawing self-inflicted harm".

#officialexplanation

[evadyw]

Hello,

Can someone please explain the correct answer D in more detail? I got D by POE but I didn't love it because I thought the "preventing harm to others" part in D is not equivalent to "protect the interests of others" in the argument hence D does not really undermine. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The argument concludes that governments are justified in outlawing behavior that puts one's own health at risk. Why? Because people who harm themselves inevitably harm others.

We're asked to undermine this argument with a principle. Note the rare use of a principle twist to a Weaken question. Since we're using a principle, it's likely the argument's reasoning will rest on conditional logic. Answer choice (D) attacks the argument's assumption. The argument assumes that preventing harm to others is a sufficient justification for laws that limit personal freedom.

Incorrect Answers
(A) connects two terms (endangering one's social ties and harming oneself) that both reside in the evidence, neither of which are connected to the new term in the conclusion (governments are justified in outlawing behavior that puts one's own health at risk.
(B) supports the argument.
(C) reverses the logic of the argument's assumption. However, this doesn't undermine the argument's assumption.
(E) is out of scope. This is an irrelevant comparison.