Q9 - In addition to the labor

[nanagyanewa]

Hello,

can someone please help me with Q9? It looked very straightforward but I don't understand why C is the right answer. I eliminated down to A and B and then I chose B because when I negate this statement, it could undermine the argument but I guess I'm on the wrong track. Thanks for any help.

[giladedelman]

Thanks for the question! Perhaps you had trouble with this one because the assumption is one that we might be inclined to make in the real world.

Vineyards' reputations play a role in determining wine prices, the argument goes, so an expensive wine is not always a good one. The assumption, then, is that reputation doesn't always equal quality. There are some lousy wines out there, in other words, that are nevertheless expensive merely because of the name on the label.

(C) is correct. If reputation does not always indicate quality, but it does influence price, then some wines will be expensive but not good.

(A) is out of scope. Beware of normative statements! The argument doesn't say anything about what wine prices "should" be based on. For all we know, the author loves the current system.

(B) is a conclusion booster. The argument says explicitly that the price of wine sometimes doesn't correlate to its quality. There's no need to assume this more extreme position. And, in response to your point, are you sure you negated it properly? The negation of "never" is "sometimes," so we get: "Price is sometimes an accurate indication of the quality of a bottle of wine." Well, okay, but does that destroy the conclusion? No, because it could still be the case that it sometimes isn't an accurate indication.

(D) is out of scope. We have no information about the relative influence of these factors.

(E) is way out of scope. Lesser-known vineyards? Where does that come up?

So, I hope that clears up your questions! Let me know if you're still having trouble.

[zainrizvi]

I feel like I might be over thinking this question but I believe there is this inherent vagueness in this question.

Suppose you negate (C). But what if you had an expensive wine from a low rep vineyard (due to it's labor and materials, not due to it's rep)? The expensive wine wouldn't be good.... don't you have to make a assumption here that the price correlates with the quality? I feel like there is a missing piece.

[T.J.]

Thanks for the analysis. I was tricked by this argument, as I was so hung up on how the argument feels disconnected within itself. The issue is the equivocation between an expensive wine and a wine that has reputation. My basis is that a wine can be expensive for reasons other than its reputation.
However, I think this argument actually makes two assumptions:
1. Since the reputation plays a role in determining the price of a wine, an expensive wine has got reputation on it.
2. The reputable wine isn't necessarily good.
Thus, the question gets on the second assumption while there are actually two assumptions in this argument.
What you guys think?

[ohthatpatrick]

This is definitely a tricky argument to think about in terms of formal logic, matching symbol to symbol and figuring out all the things we'd have to add to make it logically valid.

It's much easier to process in the conversational sense.

The conclusion is, "sometimes an expensive wine isn't really a good a wine".

Why does the author believe that?
Is it because labor/materials drive up the price,
because reputation drives up the price,
or both?

In terms of the logic of the argument, the author could be assuming either or both.

He really has to assume
EITHER the labor/materials OR the reputation OR BOTH can inflate the price beyond its true quality.

If we're playing along with a little common sense real world knowledge, we would probably think that spending more on materials/labor DOES directly make wine better and DOES justify a higher price tag, while jacking up the price just because the vineyard's reputation allows you to DOESN'T really have anything to do with the actual quality of wine.

So it's more likely that the correct answer will address the assumption that "reputation can inflate the price beyond its true quality".

One previous poster asked:
Suppose you negate (C). But what if you had an expensive wine from a low rep vineyard (due to it's labor and materials, not due to it's rep)? The expensive wine wouldn't be good.... don't you have to make a assumption here that the price correlates with the quality? I feel like there is a missing piece.

Negating (C) gives us "reputation ALWAYS indicates the quality of wine".

You were saying what if we had an expensive wine that was costly due to its labor/materials, not the low reputation of its vineyard. Then it seems like you inferred that the expensive wine wouldn't be good. I'm assuming you were inferring this via the negation of (C): since the reputation is low, the quality is low.

I think the problem with this counterexample is that you're sort of going against the rule of thumb proposed by negated-(C) by hypothesizing a wine that has really expensive labor/materials yet comes with a low reputation. Why would it? It sounds like it's a quality wine. In the world of negated-(C), reputation and quality go hand-in-hand, so if a vineyard had a low reputation then it would be making crappy wine, not spending tons on labor and materials to make a good wine.

In response to the most recent poster, I think you're correct in saying that the argument also assumes that "an expensive wine at least sometimes comes from a reputable vineyard".

But of course, Necessary Assumption questions frequently have MANY assumptions. We don't know which one the correct answer will go for, so we just have to stay flexible and primarily trust our guns when it comes to eliminating the inferior answers.

Let me know if you have unresolved qualms about this.

[ttunden]

Can anyone explain why the answer is not D? Is it because it said greater role than quality of its grapes?

What if D said the rep generally plays a greater role than labor & materials in determining price. Would D then be a necessary assumption?

[WaltGrace1983]

Can anyone explain why the answer is not D? Is it because it said greater role than quality of its grapes?

What if D said the rep generally plays a greater role than labor & materials in determining price. Would D then be a necessary assumption?

I don't really think you have to assume too much about how the cost arises via certain elements (like reputation) in relation to other elements (like labor/materials). I think you were trying to attack the relationship between "reputation" and "expensive." However, can't the reputation play an equal role in price? Can't labor and materials be 50% of the price and reputation be 50%? I would argue that the reputation, even if it only made up half of the wine's price, could still make the wine "expensive."

However, I think the argument really was trying to get us to equate "higher reputation" with "higher cost" and "lower reputation" with "lower cost." I mean, sure, there seems to be a gap between reputation and being expensive but I think we were supposed to plug in that gap with the information we had.

The much more important gap is between "reputation" and "not always a good wine."

What do you think?

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice response ... I like the 50/50 example for showing how negating (D) doesn’t do anything to hurt the argument.

Since I didn’t do it before, let me knock off the other answer choices

(A) This is the ol’ "Goes Beyond the Finish Line" trap answer on Necessary Assumption; it entices us to pick something that the author would probably ALSO believe. However, (A) is not essential in order to get from "reputation affects price" to "expensive wine doesn’t mean good wine". In fact, if you negate (A) and say "the price of wine should NOT reflect the wine’s quality", this would agree with author’s conclusion, not hurt it.

(B) This is the ol’ "Too extreme" trap on Necessary Assumption. "Never" accurate? The author says that expensive wines are not ALWAYS good wines. But that leaves plenty of room for believing that SOMETIMES, price IS an accurate indication of quality.

(D) This is the ol’ "Fake Comparison" trap on Necessary Assumption. The author’s logic doesn’t hinge on a precise quantitative comparison between reputation vs. quality of grapes. The author only said that reputation plays a role in the price. We can’t go from that claim to accusing the author of ranking reputation above grape quality. As Walt said in the previous post, you could negate this and say that reputation and grape quality play equal roles ... that would certainly allow the author to still make the case that a given wine is twice as expensive as it should be because 50% of the cost came from reputation.

(E) This is the ol’ "Fake Opposite" trap. Since the author is talking about "well-known vineyards pricing their wine ABOVE its real quality", this answer tries to bait us into assuming that "NOT well-known vineyards DON’T price their wine above its real quality". The author doesn’t need that to be true. His argument still works even if lesser-known vineyards are ALSO mismatching price and quality.

[WaltGrace1983]

(E) This is the ol’ "Fake Opposite" trap. Since the author is talking about "well-known vineyards pricing their wine ABOVE its real quality", this answer tries to bait us into assuming that "NOT well-known vineyards DON’T price their wine above its real quality". The author doesn’t need that to be true. His argument still works even if lesser-known vineyards are ALSO mismatching price and quality.

I thought this was an incredibly helpful response. Thanks for the tip. The author gives us (Reputation) → ~(Necessarily good). (E) gives us ~(Reputation) as a premise. We don't know anything about what happens when the reputation is NOT very prevalent, just when it is.

This is very similar to 42.4.13 ("top loading washing machines") in which (D) and (E) hinge on evidence that is the opposite of the argument's evidence. The argument talks about people who ARE in wheelchairs....(D) and (E) talk about people who are NOT in wheelchairs.

Good stuff!

[jrnlsn.nelson]

However, I think the argument really was trying to get us to equate "higher reputation" with "higher cost" and "lower reputation" with "lower cost." I mean, sure, there seems to be a gap between reputation and being expensive but I think we were supposed to plug in that gap with the information we had.

The much more important gap is between "reputation" and "not always a good wine."

What do you think?

This helped, thanks WaltGrace1983. I agree with you on this. I do think this is an odd problem though, given the deductions the test makers are expecting us to make in order to arrive at the correct answer.

For example, I think equating "higher reputation" with "higher price" is not necessarily a super easy inference to make, in the LSAT world at least. In the normal world I am inclined to quickly make such an inference, yet in the LSAT world I am far more scrupulous with my inferences.

I say this because the stimulus says:

"...the reputation of the vineyard where the grapes originate plays a role in determining the price of the finished wine."

Thus, I believe you can interpret "plays a role in determining the price" as denoting either "plays the primary role in determining price" or "plays a very insignificant role."

Based on this reasoning I ultimately chose (D). I still see the problems with (D), and now see that the more moderate language of (C) makes it a more attractive answer (i.e. "...does not always indicate...). Yet, my issue with (C) still stands.

[dhlim3]

By means of formal logic:

Premise: Price --> Reputation (Price of the grape depends on the reputation of the vineyard)

Conclusion: Price -s-> ~Quality (Price sometimes does not reflect the Quality of the wine, or if said differently, Price does not always reflect the quality of the wine)

Assumption: Reputation -s-> ~Quality (Reputation does not always reflect the quality of the wine).



Answer C.

[jadewzheng]

Dear Manhattan Forum LSAT Geeks-

Would an answer along the lines of "the labor and materials used to make wine do not always indicate the quality of the wine" been correct?

[WesleyC316]

I‘m having a hard time understanding this question. Why can't it be the case that the reputation of a vineyard DOES always indicate the quality of its wines? The argument still stands since labor and materials also play a role in determining the price, and it could be that these two factors are not indicating the quality of wines. Why blame the reputation? HELP PLEASE!

[DorianG286]

I‘m having a hard time understanding this question. Why can't it be the case that the reputation of a vineyard DOES always indicate the quality of its wines? The argument still stands since labor and materials also play a role in determining the price, and it could be that these two factors are not indicating the quality of wines. Why blame the reputation? HELP PLEASE!

The stimulus wants us to assume that winery reputation isn't always consistent with wine quality in the sense that a good reputation doesn't always equal good wine. If we negate C, then we have to assume that good reputation equals good wine. If that's the case, then an expensive wine—whose price is artificially inflated due to winery reputation— should definitely be a good wine independent of labor of materials. It could be said that the quality of a winery's labor and materials is already included in its reputation.