Self-study
To be horrific, a monster must be threatening. ███████ ██ ███ ██ ████████ ██████████████ ██████ ██ ██████ ████████ ██ ████████ ████████ █████████ ██████ ██ █ ███████ ██ ██████████ █████████ ████ ██ ██ ████████████ ██ █████ ████ █ ██████████ ██████ ███████ ██ ████████ ██ ██ ████████ ██████████
Stimulus Summary
Sentence 1: To be horrific, a monster must be threatening. The phrase must be introduces a necessary condition. If horrific, then threatening.
Sentence 2: "Whether or not" signals that the rule doesn't care about psychological, moral, or social dangers, or triggers infantile fears. Read past that irrelevant noise and the rule is: if physically dangerous, then threatening.
Sentence 3: Even a physically benign monster just emphasizes the rule that follows. It's language that signals, despite the fact that you might think a physically harmless monster wouldn't trigger this rule, any monster, even a physically harmless one, can trigger this rule. The rule is: if a monster inspires revulsion, then it is horrific.
Two of the three rules share horrific, so they can be connected into a chain. Here is the entire stimulus with the irrelevant parts stripped out:
inspires revulsion
→
horrific
→
threatening
↗
physically dangerous
Anticipation
The correct answer will be guaranteed by our conditional rules. Since the LSAT typically tries to test whether we can make connections between statements, one likely candidate for the right answer is an inference following from the connection between "inspires revulsion" and "threatening." We know that if a monster inspires revulsion, it must be threatening.
23.
Which one of the following █████████ ███████ ████ ███ ██████████ ██████
a
Any horror-story monster ████ ██ ███████████ ██ ████ █████████
This says if threatening, then horrific, which just reverses Sentence 1. Sentence 1 makes threatening necessary for horrific, not sufficient. A monster can be threatening without being horrific
b
A monster that ██ ███████████████ ██████████ ███ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ██ ███ █████████
Could be false. We know that monsters that inspire revulsion are horrific. That doesn’t imply monsters that don’t inspire revulsion are not horrific. They can still be horrific for other reasons besides revulsion.
c
If a monster ████████ █████████ █████ ███ ██ ███ ██████████ ██████████ ████ ██ ██ ███ █████████
Could be false. We know that physically dangerous monsters are threatening. We also know that horrific monsters are threatening. This doesn’t imply that monsters that aren’t physically dangerous aren’t horrific. A monster can be horrific without being physically dangerous.
d
If a monster ██ ████ ████████ ███ ███████████████ ████████████ ████ ██ ████ ███ ███████ ██████████
This tries to make horrific imply something about revulsion, but the chain does not run in that direction. From horrific, we can conclude threatening, and that is all. Revulsion is sufficient for horrific, not necessary, so a horrific monster might or might not inspire revulsion. (D) also throws in psychologically threatening, which doesn't connect to anything else in the chain.
e
All monsters that ███ ███ ██████████ ██████████ ███ ████ ███ ███████████████ █████████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ███ ████████████
Revulsion guarantees horrific, and horrific guarantees threatening, so revulsion guarantees threatening. The other two qualities, not physically dangerous and psychologically dangerous, don't affect the logic, because we know that inspiring revulsion is enough to guarantee threatening. Whatever other qualities the monster possesses or doesn't possess don't matter when revulsion is enough, by itself, to guarantee threatening.