PrepTest 151, Section 4, Question 1
Joe: All vampire stories are based on an(63 more words not shown)
Joe and Maria disagree over(8 more words not shown)
- AVampires are always(6 more words not shown)
- BVampires are always(10 more words not shown)
- CNo vampire stories(2 more words not shown)
- DNo vampire stories(8 more words not shown)
- EIn all vampire(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A vampire story is fiction. But is Joe objecting to the fiction, or to the story's own rules?
At first, 'absurd premises' sounds like a complaint that vampires aren't real. Joe's actual objection is different. If every victim becomes another vampire, the vampire population keeps growing. If those vampires never die and have existed since ancient times, why would they still have so much prey available? He's asking whether the story's rules fit the world it describes.
Maria challenges one of those rules. In most of the stories she knows, only a few victims become vampires; the others stay dead. That changes Joe's picture of each victim adding another permanent predator.
What we’re looking for
We're asked what they disagree about. I'd look for the claim about how many victims become vampires. Joe says every victim, in all the stories. Maria gives stories in which that doesn't happen.
Working the answers
- A
Maria says many victims remain dead, not that vampires die. Those are different groups. She could accept that every vampire is immortal while denying that every victim joins their ranks. We don't have her rejecting Joe's claim about immortality.
- B
Maria doesn't address when vampires first appeared. Her objection concerns what happens to their victims. Ancient vampires could turn only a few victims into new vampires, so her account needn't disagree with Joe about the age of the vampire population.
- C
Finding a mistake in Joe's description doesn't establish that no vampire story is incoherent. Maria could think a story has some other inconsistency, or even that Joe's broader criticism is right for a different reason. She disputes his premise without defending every story against every possible objection.
- D
Neither speaker establishes this claim about every story's depiction of population size. Joe argues that vampires would almost eliminate their prey under the rules he describes. Maria disputes the transformation rule. We can't turn that exchange into opposite positions about whether any story depicts a large vampire population.
- ECorrect
Joe's reasoning relies on every victim becoming a vampire in all vampire stories. Maria says that in most stories she knows, only a few victims become vampires. Those stories are counterexamples to Joe's universal claim. We don't need Maria to give an exact percentage, or to describe every vampire story, to see the disagreement.
More Disagreement questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Disagreement questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.