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.
60 comments
Congratulations to JY's "Final Four" - all the best and can't wait to learn from you through your experience:)
Also, check this out:
@albertlius618 yes, like all our other webinars, you'll be able to access this one too once the it's done.
Update
We're closing signups on Sunday night at 11:59pm.
We'll email everyone selection results by Tuesday morning.
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.
Please do this.
Hey everyone, thanks for signing up! We received so many more signups than I anticipated.
Since I want this course to be interactive, I am only selecting four 7Sagers. This is an unfortunately small number. If you did not get an email from me, it means that you were not selected and I'm sorry about this. But, we will be making this webinar available online once it's done.
Now I'm thinking I put the wrong answer for the MBT question. I'm getting GoogleForms Test anxiety.
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.
Are these recording ever going to get posted?
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.
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.
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.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nocturnal
Agree with @alejoroarios925's excellent Lawgic:
CPHN -> /USS
Some NP are St
Based on the description of hunting at night, one can deduce that CPHN is a subset of NP. Equivocating the two would be incorrect, which is why some CPHN are St is inaccurate. However, we can still infer that some NP (CPHN) use more than their sense of smell (/USS).
Yeah, probably best to have headphones with a mic out of consideration for everyone. I think most(?) come with a mic... not sure. I'm pretty sure the standard Apple ones that come in the box for iPhones include a built in mic.
I checked on Amazon just now and you can get excellent ones for $11. But probably should wait till we announce the selection unless you need one for something else.
Man, I’ve been listening to 90’s music all day and I just can’t get enough.
Hey @jimenezjajj333.jj the mini course is free as long as you commit to doing it. It only costs you money if you are selected, agree to do it, then flake on us.
@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.
No recordings are available of this—sorry.
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?