LSAT 149 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q17

LR Question 17 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Meade: People who are injured as a result of their…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Weaken

CONCLUSION: Governments are right to ban behavior that puts one’s own health at risk.

REASONING: Hurting yourself imposes emotional and financial costs on others.

ANALYSIS: On principle questions, you just have to say “the reasoning is right” or “the reasoning is wrong”. On this type of principle question, you just need to find a principle that matches the reasoning and says “we should do that” or “we should not do that”.

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1. This is a nonsense answer. The argument never talked about endangering your ties to others. This just takes two concepts from the stimulus “harm to self” and “ties to others” and throws them together with an unrelated concept “endangering ties”. 
2. This strengthens the argument that people should not be allowed to harm themselves.
3. The argument already meets this condition. Harming yourself does impose financial and emotional costs on others, so we might be justified in limiting it.
4. CORRECT. The argument gave us just one reason for limiting harm to self: it can harm others. This answer tells us that limiting harm to others is not a good justification. 
5. This talks about the moral obligations people have to each other. But the argument is about what laws the government should make.