LSAT 137 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q18

LR Question 18 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Censor: All anarchist novels have two objectionable…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle

CONCLUSION: We should ban anarchist novels if they would harm society.

REASONING: Anarchist novels have a couple of things wrong with them.

ANALYSIS: This argument is missing a step. We know anarchist novels might cause problems. That doesn’t necessarily mean we should ban them.

For example, maybe it’s wrong to ban books, no matter what’s wrong with it. That’s actually a principle in many societies, including ours (for the most part).

To support the argument, we need to show that it’s permissible to ban books.

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1. This tells you when not to ban books. We want to show that we can ban anarchist books.
2. Very tempting. But, this shows that we can ban books if banning them does more ‘good than harm’. The stimulus says we can ban books if the books do more ‘harm than good’. Those are different things.
3. This gives us a necessary condition for banning a book (‘only if’). We need a sufficient condition.
4. CORRECT. This works. Anarchist novels have two objectionable characteristics. So this shows that it’s permissible to ban them.
5. Same as C.