Bunuel wrote:
Principle: It is healthy for children to engage in an activity that promotes their intellectual development only if engaging in that activity does not detract from their social development.
Application: Although Megan’s frequent reading stimulates her intellectually, it reduces the amount of time she spends interacting with other people. Therefore, it is not healthy for her to read as much as she does.
The application of the principle is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?
(A) It misinterprets the principle as a universal claim intended to hold in all cases without exception, rather than as a mere generalization.
(B) It overlooks the possibility that the benefits of a given activity may sometimes be important enough to outweigh the adverse health effects.
(C) It misinterprets the principle to be, at least in part, a claim about what is unhealthy, rather than solely a claim about what is healthy.
(D) It takes for granted that any decrease in the amount of time a child spends interacting with others detracts from that child’s social development.
(E) It takes a necessary condition for an activity’s being healthy as a sufficient condition for its being so.
EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT
The word “only” indicates a necessary condition, so the principle essentially says, “If it is healthy to engage in an activity that promotes their intellectual development, then it is necessary that that activity does not detract from their social development.” In other words: healthy to engage intellectually —> detracts socially. The contrapositive would be: detracts socially —> healthy to engage intellectually.
We are asked to criticize the application of this principle. The application in this question seems okay, but if I were to criticize it I would note that it assumes that “reduces the amount of time interacting” is the same thing as “detracts socially.” Is this necessarily true? I’m not so sure. I have two different predictions here. 1) Perhaps Megan would benefit socially from spending less time interacting with her friends. Maybe less is more; that’s possible, unless the premises say it’s impossible. 2) Perhaps reading books will make Megan a more stimulating social companion, so even though she has less time to spend with her friends she will have a greater overall social development in the time she does spend with them. Who knows. Either of these, or something similar, would be a great answer.
A) Nah. This isn’t what we’re looking for. And the principle wasn’t “a mere generalization.” It was a rule, meant to hold in all cases. Were there exceptions? Did it say “most of the time”? I don’t think so. This can’t be it.
B) This can’t be the answer, because the principle is only about what’s healthy and what’s not healthy. Answer B says, “Sometimes other **** is more important than health,” which would only render the principle itself irrelevant. That’s not criticizing the application, that’s overriding the principle. No way.
C) I honestly do not know what this would possibly mean in application. Let’s not dwell on it until we read D and E. I’m 99 percent certain that one of the other answers will convince me that it is correct, and therefore we will never have to waste time with this answer choice.
D) Mhmm. Yep. This is pretty much exactly our first prediction, above. Maybe Megan’s social life will be just fine if she spends a little less time with her friends. Maybe she’ll even benefit! Looks good.
E) We know what the necessary-sufficient error looks like. It looks like, “Since having blood in your body is necessary for life, as long as you have blood in your body you are alive.” That’s a commonly-tested flaw, but it wasn’t the flaw that the application made in this case.
Our answer is D.
close
18 Oct 2021, 01:30
37%
(02:16)
wrong 
