Q21 - Attourney for Ziegler: My client

[weiyichen1986]

Hey,

I picked B over E, the stimulas states that there is no evidence of Ziergler being sane, isnt this already eliminate the possibilty of being sane? I am a bit confused by this E...and Why is B wrong by the way? Thanks a lot.

[maryadkins]

The core is:

no evidence he was sane when he fired the shot, only evidence he was sane afterward -->

Z must have been insane when he fired the shot

The attorney is suggesting that failure to show a reason why something is true at a precise moment means the opposite must have been true at that moment. That's silly. Imagine someone who saw me in the morning and then later in the afternoon wearing black but didn't see me over lunch saying, "I have no evidence that you were also wearing black at lunch, so the only reasonable conclusion is that you weren't."

(E) gets at this flaw.

(B) is wrong because the argument doesn't say anything about evidence against Z's being sane (think about this... that would be evidence that Z was insane, which this argument is not about). The argument is about lack of evidence of sanity as a basis to conclude insanity.

Let me know if that's not clear!

[WaltGrace1983]

I also got turned around on (B). It just looked so much like the flaw I pre-phrased! It looked good but I knew I couldn't eliminate (E). Once I figured out that first part about "evidence against Ziegler's being sane" is actually referring to a premise of the argument, it made it much easier. Anyway, since I had problems with this I did a full analysis like I always do. Here is what I got:

No evidence that Ziegler was sane at the time he pulled the trigger
+
Only evidence that he was sane some time after Ziegler pulled the trigger
→
Ziegler was insane at the time he pulled the trigger

So a dearth of evidence for one side means a justification of the other side? Hmm....mmmkay no. This is the main flaw that I was thinking of as I go into the answer choices. When choosing between X and Y _ insane or sane _ just because there is no evidence regarding Y doesn’t prove X.

(A) This is an absolutely awful answer choice. First of all, who said anything about being a well-educated professional? Do we know that Ziegler is well-educated? Do we know that he is a professional? Well you might be able to make the latter argument but this "consulting" gig could have been a consulting job for a drug lord. Who knows? Also, the attorney is not making any suppositions that his consulting is at all relevant to anything here! He is just stating it as a fact. This would be a tempting answer choice if you misunderstood the core though.

(B) This one has some great vocabulary. It looks really good when you first glance at it but let’s take a closer look. "It concludes on the basis of" means that whatever comes after this ("evidence against Ziegler’s being sane") would be a premise. So is evidence against Ziegler being sane ever mentioned as a premise? Absolutely not! We only have evidence for Ziegler being sane. So right off of the bat we know that this one is wrong. Yet let’s continue. So the rest is saying that the argument concludes "a lack of evidence for Ziegler’s being sane." Well the argument is not concluding this. The argument is concluding that Ziegler was insane. This is all messed up but it is tempting because of the great vocabulary that I pre-phrased.

A better answer choice would look like this: "Concludes from a lack of evidence for Ziegler’s being sane during the shooting that Ziegler was insane during the time of the shooting."

(C) Maybe but we are really only talking about being insane or sane when he pulled the trigger. Anything otherwise is not really that relevant.

(D) "Morally responsible?" This is a court case and morality is not at play here. We have nothing in the stimulus about morally responsible so this is basically an automatic elimination.

(E) Okay this is not what I expected but it is the only one left and it is very interesting. This absolutely looks correct. So it "fails to consider" that this evidence for being sane after the shoot is indicative of being sane at the time of the shooting. Yea! If this is true, then there is little reason to believe the main conclusion. This fulfills our goal! Our goal is to show how the premises don’t necessarily lead to the conclusion. (E) does that.

[cyt5015]

The reason I mistakenly eliminate answer E is that I have no idea that how the fact of Ziegler's being sane after the shooting indicates his sanity at the time of shooting. Am I not allowed to doubt the feasibility of a possibility mentioned in the answer choice of flaw questions, no matter how ridiculous it may sound in real life? Thank you!

[maryadkins]

The key here on (E) is that it doesn't say his being sane afterward means he was sane before. I just says the argument fails to consider the possibility that it is an INDICATION that he was sane before, which it is...

If you see me tomorrow and I have blue eyes, that's an indication that I have blue eyes right now. It's not perfect; I could be wearing contacts either day. But it's an indication that I have blue eyes. In other words, it's evidence.

The flaw here is that the attorney doesn't recognize the evidence as evidence.

[cyt5015]

I think I was confused by this answer because:
(1) I thought "indicate" in LSAT means "must be true" or "strongly support" like the inference questions.
(2) use "past" to infer "current" or "future" is a flaw, and vice versa. Now it seems to me that this type of inference can be flaw AND evidence that you can argue either way.
Thanks a lot!

[a8l367]

The key here on (E) is that it ... just says the argument fails to consider the possibility that it is an INDICATION that he was sane before, which it is...
...
The flaw here is that the attorney doesn't recognize the evidence as evidence.

But attorney said:
My client did consulting [indication of being sane] after arrest
But... [indication that being sane after arrest might mean to being sane before]
accusers submitted evidence that he was sane after [indication that being sane after arrest might mean to being sane before]

please explain