This unit has essentially taught be my intuition is a coin flips and so I should never rely on it an always diagram because that's the only way I have been sure to get these right... sigh...
@MJ No seriously, i thuoght number 2 was valid because i mean... if this were a convo with someone it'd be safe to ASSUME shorty would be giving her speech, but this is not a regular convo with assumption based conclusions lol
Example 1: Failing the sufficient condition tells us nothing about the necessary condition...just because the sufficient condition is failed, that does not mean that there is another way to meet the necessary
EX: being in NYC is sufficient for being in the US. What if we are told that we are NOT in NYC? We can't conclude that we are not the USA. We could be in TX, Maine, Indiana, etc.
Example 2: Affirming the necessary condition does nothing for meeting the sufficient condition.
Ex: we are told that being in NYC is sufficient for being in the USA. Just because it is given that we are in the USA, we can't conclude that we are in NYC. After all, the necessary condition of being in the USA can still be true even if we are in Hawaii, Maine, or KY.
BUT, if we are told that the necessary condition is failed, then we know that the sufficient condition was not met.
EX: If we are NOT in the USA, then we KNOW that we are NOT in NYC (because NYC is in the USA)
Diagramming came in clutch for Exercise 2. Intuitively (and wrongly), I thought the conclusion was valid. However, diagramming showed that if the necessary condition occurs, it does NOT guarantee that the sufficient does or does not occur.
The sufficient condition guarantees the necessary condition AND
Failure of the necessary condition guarantees failure of the sufficient condition.
We do NOT know what happens if the necessary DOES occur.
the " failing a sufficient condition means nothing but failing a necessary condition yield's valid conclusions" genuinely shifted the way I have thought about suff/nec for the last year of studying wow. this is SO helpful
@MelHart failing a sufficient condition simply does not give enough information to draw any valid conclusions on the necessary condition.
Texas -> USA : Being in the USA is required, or in other words, necessary to be in Texas.
Let's assume that we are indeed located in the USA (affirming the necessary condition). Does that tell us anything that we can use to be certain about where we actually are in the USA? No, it does not.
Not being in the USA (/USA) cannot guarantee that we are in Texas. We could be in any other state: California, Maryland, etc. We cannot draw any valid conclusion about where we are in the USA. Any valid conclusion must be known for certain.
The opposite applies to negating a sufficient condition.
/Texas (negating a sufficient condition) cannot guarantee that we are, or are not, in the USA. We could be anywhere else that is not Texas(/Texas). We could be in Antarctica, Los Angeles, or in outer space. Anywhere that is not Texas. Negating a sufficient condition does not provide enough information to affirm a necessary condition, just as validating a necessary condition tells us nothing about the validity of the sufficient condition.
I’m a little confused I keep doing it back ways like I did ED YT F J but like I understood it the same but I don’t want to mixed it up for the test so I’m a little confused on knowing when J or F is supposed to be on right or left
In the first example, which would be more correct between A (not a force user) and C (not a jedi)?
I know the LSAT is so focused on choosing the best answer even if more than one are correct, so im curious if its better to go with the more direct answer or the most complicated/comprehensive one.
I liked that these examples showed conditional indicators that don't always act in that capacity. It helps to be able to practice distinguishing when it acts as an indicator and when it's just a word. I like to bold and underline indicators and italicize them when they are just a word as I do these practice questions.
To be a Jedi, one must be a Force user. Becoming a Force user requires years of training, which further requires extraordinary discipline. Tom has only received six months of training in the Force. Therefore, Tom ____.
"Only" does not act as an indicator
The vote to grant Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers will not pass if Senator Amidala delivers her speech. Amidala cannot deliver her speech unless the attempt to assassinate her fails. Her assassins planted a bomb on her starship but unbeknownst to them, she was not on the ship when the explosive detonated. Therefore, the vote to grant the Chancellor emergency powers will not pass.
I find it harder translating into logic than reading the stimulus sometimes... I think my challenges for the LSAT may rely on understanding what they're asking me to figure out. The logic itself makes sense to me just because the assassination failed doesn't mean she's going to give her speech they're may be other factors...
In the second sentence of Exercise 2 I counted "cannot" as a Group 4 meaning I negated the necessary condition automatically. I still came to the same conclusion, that the argument was invalid.
But it has been helpful to learn that whenever there are two negation indicators that they cancel themselves out. (Admittedly I also missed "unless"). I'm not sure if that has been explicitly said before this lesson, maybe I've just missed it, but this was certainly the first time I have heard about this rule.
I see a lot of confusion on this lesson, which caught me by surprise. It seems so far what we've learned is that you can go right but not left (goes back to the superset/subset idea taught earlier). So if there is no condition of her giving the speech given another condition like "If the planted bomb attempt fails, Amidala will deliver her speech" (AAF -> SAS) then we cannot conclude she does deliver her speech. That's how it worked in my head, given that the argument used wording such as "cannot deliver" instead of "will deliver".
Sorry if that was super long. But hopefully this helps anybody who is having any difficulty on this one.
Would the conclusion become valid if after "her assassins planted a bomb..." there were a sentence about how she later gave the speech? This would trigger the sufficient condition of SAS --> /P.
@Dexterity Wouldn't the first statement "Failing a condition triggers everything to its left. (<---)" need to be qualified by saying "triggers everything to its left, but negated?"
Does anyone advise memorizing the indicators (and their categories) although they are under/overinclusive? Or is practice a better strategy to getting the hang of these to avoid constantly referring to my notes?
Is this just confusing sufficient for necessity? The way I see it as an invalid conclusion is because we don't know if she delivered her speech, we just know that the assassination attempt failed.
For simple terms/understanding, is the second problem invalid because it is 'assuming' she would deliver her speech? If there was a premise that said, "If the assassination attempt fails, then she will deliver her speech". Would that therefore make it a valid conclusion? This is how I understood it...
My gut instinct was that we couldn't say for certain that the bomb on her starship was the assassination attempt on her... not that she might not have given the speech...
@elena That was the first part, it is not stated that it was the attempt, the only attempt, or the last assassination attempt. Secondly there is nothing to state her actual course of action. There is nothing stating she will be giving a speech in the first place. A very lazy way to try to make it work (but fail) is using contextualized inference which usually leads us down the wrong logic path.
In question 2, since the necessary condition is what is stated and it does not refer to the sufficient condition. We cannot infer whether SAS or /p is true. So is that why we have an invalid conclusion?
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273 comments
It's a good thing I like Star Wars. Seems like 7Sage does too.
This unit has essentially taught be my intuition is a coin flips and so I should never rely on it an always diagram because that's the only way I have been sure to get these right... sigh...
@MJ No seriously, i thuoght number 2 was valid because i mean... if this were a convo with someone it'd be safe to ASSUME shorty would be giving her speech, but this is not a regular convo with assumption based conclusions lol
maybe the lessons have been working, but in this case the lawgic def overcomplicated a concept that made complete sense in English.
so question because I think this will help me out. if a sufficient condition is mentioned twice we would create like branch instead of a link?
Example 1: Failing the sufficient condition tells us nothing about the necessary condition...just because the sufficient condition is failed, that does not mean that there is another way to meet the necessary
EX: being in NYC is sufficient for being in the US. What if we are told that we are NOT in NYC? We can't conclude that we are not the USA. We could be in TX, Maine, Indiana, etc.
Example 2: Affirming the necessary condition does nothing for meeting the sufficient condition.
Ex: we are told that being in NYC is sufficient for being in the USA. Just because it is given that we are in the USA, we can't conclude that we are in NYC. After all, the necessary condition of being in the USA can still be true even if we are in Hawaii, Maine, or KY.
BUT, if we are told that the necessary condition is failed, then we know that the sufficient condition was not met.
EX: If we are NOT in the USA, then we KNOW that we are NOT in NYC (because NYC is in the USA)
Is this right?
Diagramming came in clutch for Exercise 2. Intuitively (and wrongly), I thought the conclusion was valid. However, diagramming showed that if the necessary condition occurs, it does NOT guarantee that the sufficient does or does not occur.
The sufficient condition guarantees the necessary condition AND
Failure of the necessary condition guarantees failure of the sufficient condition.
We do NOT know what happens if the necessary DOES occur.
the " failing a sufficient condition means nothing but failing a necessary condition yield's valid conclusions" genuinely shifted the way I have thought about suff/nec for the last year of studying wow. this is SO helpful
@bellaens18 do you mind explaining this a little further? i'm confused.
@MelHart failing a sufficient condition simply does not give enough information to draw any valid conclusions on the necessary condition.
Texas -> USA : Being in the USA is required, or in other words, necessary to be in Texas.
Let's assume that we are indeed located in the USA (affirming the necessary condition). Does that tell us anything that we can use to be certain about where we actually are in the USA? No, it does not.
Not being in the USA (/USA) cannot guarantee that we are in Texas. We could be in any other state: California, Maryland, etc. We cannot draw any valid conclusion about where we are in the USA. Any valid conclusion must be known for certain.
The opposite applies to negating a sufficient condition.
/Texas (negating a sufficient condition) cannot guarantee that we are, or are not, in the USA. We could be anywhere else that is not Texas (/Texas). We could be in Antarctica, Los Angeles, or in outer space. Anywhere that is not Texas. Negating a sufficient condition does not provide enough information to affirm a necessary condition, just as validating a necessary condition tells us nothing about the validity of the sufficient condition.
It's two sides of the same coin, hope this helps!
I’m a little confused I keep doing it back ways like I did ED YT F J but like I understood it the same but I don’t want to mixed it up for the test so I’m a little confused on knowing when J or F is supposed to be on right or left
We KNOW something if:
Necessary condition FAILS to occur
Sufficient condition OCCURS
WE DON'T KNOW something if:
Necessary Condition OCCURS
Sufficient condition FAILS to occur
@Cee🦋 This makes so much sense ur amazing
@Cee🦋 Hi, can you please use this in an example? I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Thank you!
I keep going back to the cat and mammal examples.
ex. Tom is not a mammal. We know for sure then that Tom is not a cat because being a mammal is 100% required for being a cat.
ex. Tom is a cat. We know for sure that Tom is also a mammal because being a cat is sufficient enough info to know Tom is 100% a mammal.
ex. Tom is a mammal. Well that doesnt guarantee anything because Tom could still be a human or dog or whatever other mammal.
ex. Tom is not a cat. Again, doesnt guarantee anything cause Tom could still be another type of mammal.
In the first example, which would be more correct between A (not a force user) and C (not a jedi)?
I know the LSAT is so focused on choosing the best answer even if more than one are correct, so im curious if its better to go with the more direct answer or the most complicated/comprehensive one.
@MaggieRhodes Came to the comment section wondering the same thing. I assume its whichever one is the direct sufficient condition but I am not 100%.
I liked that these examples showed conditional indicators that don't always act in that capacity. It helps to be able to practice distinguishing when it acts as an indicator and when it's just a word. I like to bold and underline indicators and italicize them when they are just a word as I do these practice questions.
"Only" does not act as an indicator
"Cannot" does not act as an indicator
I find it harder translating into logic than reading the stimulus sometimes... I think my challenges for the LSAT may rely on understanding what they're asking me to figure out. The logic itself makes sense to me just because the assassination failed doesn't mean she's going to give her speech they're may be other factors...
In the second sentence of Exercise 2 I counted "cannot" as a Group 4 meaning I negated the necessary condition automatically. I still came to the same conclusion, that the argument was invalid.
But it has been helpful to learn that whenever there are two negation indicators that they cancel themselves out. (Admittedly I also missed "unless"). I'm not sure if that has been explicitly said before this lesson, maybe I've just missed it, but this was certainly the first time I have heard about this rule.
I see a lot of confusion on this lesson, which caught me by surprise. It seems so far what we've learned is that you can go right but not left (goes back to the superset/subset idea taught earlier). So if there is no condition of her giving the speech given another condition like "If the planted bomb attempt fails, Amidala will deliver her speech" (AAF -> SAS) then we cannot conclude she does deliver her speech. That's how it worked in my head, given that the argument used wording such as "cannot deliver" instead of "will deliver".
Sorry if that was super long. But hopefully this helps anybody who is having any difficulty on this one.
so is this saying she CAN give a speech but theres no proof she DOES? @Kevin_Lin
@KimberlyLoki222 Right. We know IF she gives a speech, that requires the assassination attempt to fail.
The assassination attempt failed. But that doesn't prove she gave a speech. There's no statement telling us, "If ________, then she'll give a speech."
Would the conclusion become valid if after "her assassins planted a bomb..." there were a sentence about how she later gave the speech? This would trigger the sufficient condition of SAS --> /P.
@EmeryBeals Yes. We'd need something telling us she gave the speech. Otherwise, there's no way for us to infer that she must have given the speech.
Whenever you're dealing with logic chains like these, it helps a ton to remember these rules of thumb:
Failing a condition negates everything to its left. (<---)
Satisfying a condition triggers everything to its right. (--->)
@Dexterity Hey! Do you think you can give me an example of this?
Thank you.
@paligrrl Picture this chain:
A --> B --> C
Failing B yields the inference that A, which is left of B, is also failed, because that's how sufficiency/necessity works. If A > B, then /B > /A.
Satisfying B yields the inference that C, which is right of B, is also satisfied, because that's also how sufficiency/necessity works.
@Dexterity Thank you sm!! :)
lost me big time
[This comment was deleted.]
@Dexterity Wouldn't the first statement "Failing a condition triggers everything to its left. (<---)" need to be qualified by saying "triggers everything to its left, but negated?"
please remind me to go back to this
@Bicakum03 come back
Does anyone advise memorizing the indicators (and their categories) although they are under/overinclusive? Or is practice a better strategy to getting the hang of these to avoid constantly referring to my notes?
@Kellbell206 I would definitely memorize. You just can't get around it.
Is this just confusing sufficient for necessity? The way I see it as an invalid conclusion is because we don't know if she delivered her speech, we just know that the assassination attempt failed.
Writing the contrapositive for q1 helped me a lot
@EllenSCola same, i feel like the video explanation overcomplicated it
For simple terms/understanding, is the second problem invalid because it is 'assuming' she would deliver her speech? If there was a premise that said, "If the assassination attempt fails, then she will deliver her speech". Would that therefore make it a valid conclusion? This is how I understood it...
@vonRentzell Correct
My gut instinct was that we couldn't say for certain that the bomb on her starship was the assassination attempt on her... not that she might not have given the speech...
@elena That was the first part, it is not stated that it was the attempt, the only attempt, or the last assassination attempt. Secondly there is nothing to state her actual course of action. There is nothing stating she will be giving a speech in the first place. A very lazy way to try to make it work (but fail) is using contextualized inference which usually leads us down the wrong logic path.
In question 2, since the necessary condition is what is stated and it does not refer to the sufficient condition. We cannot infer whether SAS or /p is true. So is that why we have an invalid conclusion?