It is a mistake to conclude, as some have, that ancient people did not

E says that one need not know what something is before one name it.. This basically means that People can name it before even utilising the same object. The argument is about as ancient people mistakenly were believed to have not known what moral rights were despite that they were using it probably. Now to know the assumption , it basically is saying that naming something before knowing does not have to be the case.

E suits it. How come E is not the answer?

The question is about the "assumption" the argument makes, if you read the last line again carefully you will realise the argument states - "It is like saying that the person..."
implicit in this statement is that the author agrees that without knowing the name of a fruit, someone can know about its qualities (hence harvest it), hope this helps.

E - One need not know what something is before naming it - this is a stretch, nowhere does the argument mention this, you will be extrapolating the argument. Good trap choice.


And sorry to burst the pre-thinking bubble, it is not a foolproof approach, especially for LSAT questions.

Hello, brains. I have been waiting for a slower day to respond to your post, and now I have one. (In the U.S., Labor Day for a tutor often translates as a day to labor, since so many other people have time off.) I agree with what richirish has written above, especially regarding pre-thinking. Neither do I employ the oft-used negation technique for all assumption questions. Rather, I look to follow the chain of logic and make sure I stick to the exact argument/conclusion the passage outlines. This passage is easy enough, but LSAT answer choices have a way of twisting up the information into knots and confusing the test-taker, so how about we lay everything bare?

The argument is given right away. According to the author, the mistake is to conclude that just because ancient people apparently did not have an expression for something—"a moral right"—they did not know what moral rights were.

Sentence two launches into an analogy. Notice the perfectly parallel argument. Using my shell of a sentence from before, the mistake is to conclude that just because a person does not have an expression for something—here, fruit from a wild fruit tree—such a person has no idea what the fruit is.

Why did the author jump from morals to fruit to make a point? This lies at the heart of the assumption that we need to put a finger on. With that said, we can assess the answer choices.

This is a reversal of the argument being made, which twice allows us to deduce that it is very much possible to know the nature of something without affixing a name to it. Hence, this cannot be a necessary assumption. Keep looking.

The point of the analogy is not to gauge who possesses the most knowledge. If the discovery were all that counted, then why would it matter that the person return repeatedly to harvest from [a wild fruit tree] and study it? It is safe to say that this is not a required assumption.

This is a classic overstatement. The author never argues that names do not provide information about something, let alone any information, just that people can be aware of something without attaching a name to that thing. Once again, we cannot find any justification for asserting that this is a required assumption.

This is the point of the analogy and argument behind it. We have answered our earlier question about why the author chose to illustrate the argument about "a moral right" by using fruit. Such a person has some idea of what that fruit may be, even without a name, just as ancient people could have had some idea of what a moral right was, despite its apparent exclusion from the languages of the time. This is our answer. Without this assumption, the analogy falls apart and, by extension, the argument attached to it.

This answer lifts the right language of the passage but mixes up the need not part. To be clear, the answer would be fine if it read, one need not name something to know what it is. As written, however, we evidently need to consider when it is appropriate to name something, and this is not a concern brought up in the passage. The order of the words, plus the out-of-line before, makes all the difference. Like the other wayward answer choices, this one misses the mark and cannot be a necessary assumption for the argument to work.

I hope that helps. I would be happy to discuss the question further if anyone has any questions.

- Andrew

Hi though after reading some explanations earlier, I reviewed this question after a long time & I narrowed down to C and D again and chose C, Can anyone simplify between C and D,
Thanks in advance!

Hi Keyur

Option (C) essentially states that the name of a thing (whether physical or intangible) does not provide any information about that thing. This is not argued in the passage. The passage merely states that not knowing the name of a thing does not mean that one is not aware of that thing.

It is very much possible that the name of a thing does provide some information about that thing (for eg: a blue whale clearly indicates that the whale is blue in colour) while at the same time people may be aware of that thing without knowing its name (for eg: the blue whale might have different names in different languages - people speaking those languages which do not contain the word "blue" may still be aware that the whale is blue in colour).

Hence option (C) is incorrect. Hope this helps.

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