Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Flawed Arguments
Flawed Arguments
5. Causation confusions
Whenever the LSAT concludes or assumes that A causes B, 99.9% of the time its wrong. Theyll
tell you A is correlated with B or that A coincided with B and therefore A caused B. Maybe.
Thats just one possible explanation for the correlation. Here are the other 3 possible
explanations:
1) B caused A
2) C caused both A and B
3) A and B are merely coincidentally correlated and really something else, X, caused B. We see
this a lot with accident rate and speed sign questions. New speed limit sign was put up!
Accident rates drop! Therefore, it must be that the new speed limit sign dropped the accident
rate. Maybe. But maybe there was an increase in cop cars patrolling the area and thats what
actually caused the drop in accident rates. The speed limit sign was just coincidentally there.
6. Circular reasoning
Assuming what youre trying to prove. The premise is a mere restatement of the conclusion.
Everything I say is true. This is true because I said it, and everything I say is true.
8. False dichotomy
A false dichotomy only pretends to divide the universe into two binary halves. It is not a real
contradiction. Consider this real contradiction: cats and non-cats. Thats cleanly cuts the
universe into two halves. Garfield? Cat. Einstein, MacBook Pro, Love? Non-cat. Heres a false
dichotomy: Cats and dogs. See how that leaves out Einstein, MacBook Pro, and Love? They are
neither cats nor dogs.