Past LSAT Explained/PrepTest 36

December 2001 Form 1LSS50

Question 01
Joanna: The only way for a company to be successful, after emerging from bankruptcy, is to produce the same goods or services that it did before going bankrupt. It is futile for such a company to try to learn a whole new business.

Ruth: Wrong. The Kelton Company was a major mining operation that went into bankruptcy. On emerging from bankruptcy, Kelton turned its mines into landfills and is presently a highly successful waste-management concern. Ruth uses which one of the following argumentative techniques in countering Joanna's argument?

(A) She Presents a counterexample to claim. (B) She offers an alternative explanation for a phenomenon

(C) She supports a claim by offering a developed and relevant analogy

(D) She undermines a claim by showing that it rests on an ambiguity (E) She establishes a conclusion by excluding the only plausible alternative to that conclusion

Answer: In this question, Joanna advances a principle about business that her interlocutor, Ruth, attempts to refute. Making a claim about businesses, she proposes the following principle: that if a company emerges from bankruptcy, the only way for it to emerge successfully is to produce the same goods as it did before bankruptcy. The reasoning that underlies this argument, as stated by Joanna, is that, presumably, it will be too hard for a company emerging from bankruptcy to start over and produce all new goods and services, so their best bet is to stick to what they were doing before.

In order to refute this principle, there are several techniques that one could employ. One could, for example, provide a counterexample which could undercut the principle. And this is precisely what Ruth does. She argues that this principle is false by referencing the Kelton Company, a company that went through bankruptcy but emerged very successfully by changing what they used to do. Thus, the answer is A.

This is a fairly easy question

Question 26
Steven Keeva, "Defending the Revolution." Copyright Time by ABA Journal.

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