Subscription pricing
Hey 7Sagers,
I'm teaching a live RC webinar mini course! Seriously, it's going to be me but live.
What is it?
We'll start with RC theory and fundamentals and then we'll apply it to select RC passages. Some materials in this webinar will overlap with what's in the Core Curriculum but most will be new. We're only using pre PT 36 materials. You don't need to have anything printed out, just follow along on screen or you can access the content via the Question Bank.
Who's it for?
I'll be picking a very very small group so everyone can interact. I will be asking lots of questions and will cold call just like in law school! Terrifyingly fun! Priority will be given to enrolled 7Sagers. You should have completed the Intro to Arguments, Grammar, and Main Point/Conclusion classes. No other background in RC necessary. If you're already advanced in RC, eh, this is probably not for you.
When?
Session 1: Monday, April 4
Session 2: Wednesday, April 6
Session 3: Friday, April 8
All sessions 8pm - 9:30pm (Eastern Time)
You have to commit to attending all three sessions. This is a long term relationship.
How do I sign up?
Step 1: Fill out this Google Survey before Sunday night 11:59pm.
Step 2: We'll do selections and email you next week.
Step 3: If selected, we'll ask you to place a small deposit to incentivize your attending all three sessions. If you do attend all three sessions in their entirety, we will refund you 100%. If you don't attend, you will not get your deposit back. Instead, we will donate your deposit to the political organization that you hate the most.
11
60 comments
@jessicalj709 Ok, thanks for the clarification.
@elitegoods3000522 I can't seem to find it now but it was mentioned somewhere that the recording wouldn't be posted as the webinar series was essentially the same as the Core Curriculum, but with the interactive component.
JY: @albertlius618 yes, like all our other webinars, you'll be able to access this one too once the it's done.
On page 1 of comments.
No recordings are available of this—sorry.
Are these recording ever going to get posted?
No trivial solutions.
Don’t let this bother you T. It is beyond the scope of what the LSAT tests.
Thanks @quinnxzhang542 for your support. My initial response to the question was how do we know that there are actually any CP's that hunt at night to draw the inference that they are nocturnal predators. My frustration is that I doubted myself which means that I lack confidence to rely on the basics of my fundamentals.
@twssmith644 If it's any consolation to you, the "conditional logic" on the LSAT just isn't intuitive, past a certain point. This is because the conditional used on the LSAT is the material conditional, which is simply not how we intuitively use conditional statements in ordinary language. There are mountains of academic literature on the material conditional in philosophy of logic and philosophy of language, and alternatives to the material conditional go back to Fregean times.
That's not to discourage you from drilling or anything. I do think that with enough practice, anyone can develop a very strong working understanding of the material conditional and answer all the relevant LSAT questions just fine. But you're also in good company if you find the conditional logic on the LSAT counterintuitive sometimes.
That said, in this specific case with the panthers, the thing that seems to be tripping people up isn't so much the conditional as it is the vacuous universal/negative existential. In ordinary language, it's a very natural maneuver to go from "All P are Q" to "Some P are Q". Unfortunately, this maneuver is a pragmatic one, not a semantic/logical one.
@jhaldy10325 so glad you asked about JY's question in @nicole.janson35 Corey's office hours!! I actually sent a PM to @blairped887 after the deadline Sunday night to clarify my reasoning because it was driving me nuts as well. At that time I was working on Mike Kim's conditional Extreme Links to drill logic and was so frustrated I took a day off and seriously questioned if it was possible for any of this to ever become intuitive. I am going to utilize the Question Bank to drill from here on out...
Anyone know of a quick way to parse out the Conditional heavy questions in PT's 1-35 for drilling so I can build some confidence?
Or is there… I believe.
Yeah @jessicalj709 I asked Sage Corey about it and he confirmed everything @quinnxzhang542 was saying. I think what threw me off is I just can’t find the lesson that deals with it. I think LSAT just really doesn’t want to go there and they just avoid it altogether.
Ah, yeah, unicorns are often used to illustrate this point. "All unicorns have one horn" is vacuously true because there are no unicorns. "Some unicorns have one horn" is false because "some" requires that there be at least one unicorn, which there isn't.
@jessicalj709 LSAT logic operates from classical assumptions (non-contradiction, excluded middle, double negation elimination, etc.), so my comments are entirely consistent with LSAT logic. I would just be very, very surprised if something like this showed up on the LSAT because I've never seen a test question abuse vacuous truths.
Could @jy-ping or another Sage chime in on the issues raised by @quinnxzhang542 and @jhaldy10325? Which interpretation is consistent with LSAT logic?
It’s all good @quinnxzhang542 I didn’t take it like that at all. I know you’re right, I actually answered no valid inferences as well.
I just got into a lot of trouble before 7Sage by not shifting my thinking from formal logic to LSAT logic. So in my earlier prep, I would use the horseshoe to indicate a conditional statement and all the “there exists an x such that,” proper logical language, that kind of thing. When I started 7Sage I told myself I was going to abandon all that and exclusively use the methods and notations of 7Sage, and for the purposes of the LSAT it’s been a lot more effective.
So I guess my interest in this is that I can’t recall an existential fallacy lesson. “No” is simply a group 4 indicator- negate necessary and done, no existential strings attached. I think at some point JY says something about a unicorn, the classic example of this existential fallacy, so I’m wondering if maybe we do get this somewhere, but I just can’t find the lesson.
So it’s like I’m experiencing some kind of self aware cognitive dissonance or something. Hard, formal Aristotelian/Boolean logic seems to be crashing into LSAT logic and I just don’t know what to do with that. Right now, I only care about LSAT logic, so I just want to make sure that’s the understanding I’m arriving at.
@jhaldy10325, I didn't intend my comments to harp on you or anything like that. And I don't think anything terribly important turns on this, since I've yet to see an LSAT question exploit this fallacy. However, in the interest of correctness, I thought I'd bring it up.
It’s been a decade since I took formal logic, lol. Anyone else want to jump in?
Quantified sentences can be problematic for "lawgic" translations, and this one is a perfect example.
Here is the abridged first-order logic translation of the first proposition:
¬∃x(SpottedChileanPantherThatHuntsAtNight(x) ∧ UsesOnlySenseOfSmell(x))
This is equivalent to
∀x(SpottedChileanPantherThatHuntsAtNight(x) → ¬UsesOnlySenseOfSmell(x))
Inferring from this the following sentence:
∃x(SpottedChileanPantherThatHuntsAtNight(x) ∧ ¬UsesOnlySenseOfSmell(x))
is a textbook fallacy covered in every first-order logic course. From a universal, we simply can't infer an existential. From "no spotted Chilean panthers blah blah blah", we simply cannot validly infer that there are any spotted Chilean panthers at all. And there are some very good reasons why we can't make this inference.
I’m really glad LSAT doesn’t go into existential fallacies!
Here’s my latest translation:
Spotted Chilean Panther that hunts at night --> Use Only Sense of Smell
Nocturnal Predators -some--> Stealthy.
If we can say (and we have to really bend over backwards not to):
Spotted Chilean Panthers -some--> Nocturnal Predators
Then we can say:
Nocturnal Predators -some--> Only Sense of Smell
Existential fallacy aside, that’s a valid argument structure.
Even if we could classify panthers as nocturnal, (A) would still not be right.
The first proposition about the panthers is a negative existential claim, or, equivalently, a universal claim. Negative existentials/universals can be vacuously true if nothing satisfies the antecedent condition. So in this case, the first proposition is entirely consistent with there being no Chilean panthers at all in the world.
Imagine a world where the only nocturnal predators are house cats, and house cats only hunt with their sense of smell. Both propositions in the stimulus would be true, but (A) would be false.
(B) isn't correct because both propositions are true in a world where only house cats hunt nocturnally and where house cats use more than their sense of smell and where house cats are stealthy, and, lastly, where everything else in this world that uses only its sense of smell is not stealthy.
(C) isn't correct because both propositions are true in a world where no Chilean panthers exist.
So, "active mainly during the night" eh?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nocturnal
@ga4842993 I think there’s definitely some philosophical debate possible there. Maybe not with "predator,” but definitely with “nocturnal.” I mean, what does that even mean man?
@jhaldy10325 yeah I was thinking about the exact same thing as to how to interpret nocturnal predators
Well, yeah you did. *NSync is the greatest.