@RichardAbramov This is tempting but incorrect. "There is no individual freedom without the rule of law" still allows for the rule of law without individual freedom.
Each piece of the stim is the same structure, with the conc as the first claim supported by 2 more starting at "for..."
This not without this. So we negate sufficient each claim the same way.
P: Individual Freedom -> Social Integrity
P: Good Life -> Social Integrity
C: Individual Freedom -> Rule of Law
So we're probably looking for something that gives us:
Individual Freedom -> (Social Integrity) -> Rule of Law
It's also nice that most ACs are negate sufficient as well! This makes the analysis pretty straightforward.
A - suff/nec condition confusion.
B - Social Integrity -> Rule of Law. Correct, as predicted. This fills in the gap perfectly, and even with the same structure as the rest of the argument. Nice.
C - Good Life -> Rule of Law. Does not help with the stim's conclusion at all. In fact, it is an alt conclusion for the stim that AC B would make valid. It's a different question altogether.
D - suff/nec confusion. Prevails feels like a weird word choice here as well, but idk.
E - suff/nec confusion. It actually directly contradicts the conclusion in the stim, so it's egregiously wrong.
For answer choice C -
Our stim gives us a conclusion:
Individual Freedom -> Rule of Law
AC C gives an alt conclusion:
Good Life -> Rule of Law
AC B is the correct sufficient assumption for both of these conclusions. AC C is incorrect because it is not a sufficient assumption for the argument in the stim as written.
tbh I hate this videos, the way I do this exercises and what I've learned is that there will probably be more than one option that might look correct, so if I cant see all the options how can I be sure to pick a right one?
@SantiagoYanez Are you wanting to see the question before watching the video? If that's what you want, you can click on the "show question" button under the lesson title before watching the video.
Hi, how did individual freedom in the premise cancel out the one in (individual freedom --> Social Integrity) in the premise and we are only left with social integrity?
For the sufficient assumption, we don't need ind freedom because it's already established in the stim. We just need to bridge social integrity to rule of law to complete our chain.
Can someone tell me if this line of reasoning/approach has any flaws or if we can use this in SA questions?
All the info seems like it's floating around, so we must capture the argument by identifying the start and end points (but at least the end point of the argument, since we are looking for the missing sufficient assumption). The conclusion helps give us the end point and, in this particular stimulus, the start point.
End point of the entire argument: "rule of law" because "if individual freedom --> rule of law"
In the supporting premises, we are given the idea that if individual freedom --> social integrity . Now we have established a common start point for the argument, but how do we get to the end point "rule of law"? We must somehow link "social integrity" to "rule of law," and we must be cognizant that the argument ends with the "rule of law", so this must be in the necessary condition.
Correct AC: "if social integrity, then rule of law" -- this gives the missing link. Wrong answer A flips this relationship, yet another reason we must clearly identify those start and end points.
For someone who has seen more patterns, is this an approach we can generally use for conditional/formal logic heavy questions? Are there any other patterns/tips anyone has identified for this?
For this question, the "without" and "no" invokes both Group 3 and Group 4 rules.
How do you decide which rule applies?
In this example, after applying the Group 3 rule, the conclusion became:
ROL -> Individual Freedom (which is wrong) and I dont understand how this happened because I applied this rule:
Without = negate and make sufficient - so since ROL is already a negative, it cancels out and becomes a sufficient condition - is this wrong reasoning?
@breezyprabahar944 Your error is considering ROL already negative; it's not. You render it negative only because of "without", giving you "if no ROL then no F".
Regarding using "no" as a group 4 indicator, that doesn't apply here because the word "no" is used simply to describe a predicate, rather than a relationship between a subject and predicate. Consider two sentences:
No current students will graduate. In this context No is a group 4 indicator, and will yield:
If current students then will not graduate (negate necessary); or its contrapositive: if graduate then not current students.
But then consider:
Students belong to no fraternities. Here the word just describes the predicate, rather than describing the relationship of the subject to the predicate. So there's nothing to negate. That's how I understand it, anyway.
@KMK That's a good question! I'm not sure that it's really something you "decide", but rather something you realize when you identify the flaw in the argument and consider the answer choices. In the case of this question, the flaw is the gap between 'rule of law' and 'social integrity'. The conclusion is that the rule of law is necessary for individual freedom. Why? Because social integrity is necessary for individual freedom. Notice the gap? We need the answer choice to link 'rule of law' and 'social integrity'.
In abstract terms: We need A to achieve B because we need C to achieve B. (Where A = rule of law; B = individual freedom; C = social integrity). A must be connected to C.
Whether or not the second premise is there, it doesn't change the fact that there is a gap in the support structure between the first premise and the conclusion. The second premise says that social integrity is necessary to pursue the good life. But this isn't directly connected to the conclusion in the same way as the first premise. It's presented as an "also" rather than a "because".
@SaulMcGill At first, I saw how long the video was and was like not viewing it. But on second thought, I watched it, and it made this way clearer. Thank you for sharing this. Well worth the time.
This is what I worked out and found out that I was wrong because I took the conclusion as a premise. My initial (WRONG) instinct was to just take the conditionals out of context. If we take these conditionals out of context they would read:
Individual Freedom→Rule of Law
Individual Freedom →Social Integrity
Good Life → Social integrity
I can combine those to get multiple right answers:
A
There for it is true both that
/Social Integrity→/Individual Freedom→/Rule of Law
/Social Integrity→/Rule of Law
or
There can be no Rule of Law without Social Integrity
AND
B
/Rule of Law→/Individual Freedom→/Social Integrity
/Rule of Law→/Social Integrity
or
There can be no Social Integrity without Rule of Law
AND
C
/Rule of Law→/Individual Freedom→/Social Integrity→/Good Life
/Rule of Law→/Good Life
or
One cannot pursue the good life without the rule of law
You get the point; I was like yeah all these are true and you're an idiot and guessed. BUT these are wrong because it is not what the QUESTION IS ASKING US TO DO. it is saying that given:
Individual Freedom →Social Integrity
And
Good Life → Social integrity
Prove that:
Individual Freedom→Rule of Law
is true
WE CANNOT USE "Individual Freedom→Rule of Law" TO PROVE THAT "Individual Freedom→Rule of Law" IS TRUE. The only way to do that without simply declaring it is to connect something to social integrity. that is as simple as drawing a line from social integrity to rule of law.
Social Integrity→Rule of Law
or
There can be no social integrity without rule of law. B
This is the simplest way to get to that conclusion in this argument.
TLDR: Don't try and use the conclusion in proving the conclusion.
C only includes premises. The conclusion was, "There can be no individual freedom without the rule of law, for..." "For" is a premise indicator word and functions the same as "because." This means the rest of the sentence is only premises. Since the goal is to "connect the premises to the conclusion," an answer is automatically wrong if it doesn't address both parts.
More in depth
The lesson describes C as a "sufficiency-necessity mistake": it confuses a necessary condition (required for argument to work) with a sufficient condition (guarantees argument works). Both choices connect to "without the rule of law" from the conclusion, but C tries to connect the necessary condition, "the good life." This is necessary for the argument to work, but it isn't what we need to guarantee the outcome to have "individual freedom." We do need "social integrity" (in B) to guarantee "individual freedom."
@imbobe29 I think another way to think of it is AC C gives an alt conclusion:
Good Life -> Rule of Law
AC B is the correct sufficient assumption for both of the conclusions. AC C is incorrect because it is not a sufficient assumption for the argument in the stim as written.
I think you could have used group 4 application here as well. The stimulus says "there is no individual freedom without social integrity". "No" is group 4, negate necessary and "without" is group 4, negate sufficient. So that would be:
/social integrity -> / individual freedom
Contrapositive: individual freedom -> social integrity
The contrapositive using that logic technique gives you the same thing J.Y had.
I keep getting them correct, but honestly I don't understand the lawgic for these type of questions? I have intuativley gotten the answer right, but the explanation is making no sense and I can't apply lawgic... anyone else having this issue?
Started off the lesson getting every single question right, then after the alien questions I started getting them all wrong. This is the first one I get right. Thank f*cking god.
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107 comments
might as well just discard the little lightbulbs which contain the "explanations" for each answer.
🧎🏾♀️🧎🏾♀️🧎🏾♀️
i am so hopeless at lawgic i just don't cant map these correctly to save my life
Isn’t this also stated as
RL>IF>SI>GL
If you have rule of law you have individual freedom then you have social integrity.
@RichardAbramov This is tempting but incorrect. "There is no individual freedom without the rule of law" still allows for the rule of law without individual freedom.
So C is valid but irrelevant?
2/2 for the 5 star difficult questions .. but I missed all the others ?? Lol
@LawyeRell same thing happened to me! i think things are finally clicking lol
This question fried my brain
Each piece of the stim is the same structure, with the conc as the first claim supported by 2 more starting at "for..."
This not without this. So we negate sufficient each claim the same way.
P: Individual Freedom -> Social Integrity
P: Good Life -> Social Integrity
C: Individual Freedom -> Rule of Law
So we're probably looking for something that gives us:
Individual Freedom -> (Social Integrity) -> Rule of Law
It's also nice that most ACs are negate sufficient as well! This makes the analysis pretty straightforward.
A - suff/nec condition confusion.
B - Social Integrity -> Rule of Law. Correct, as predicted. This fills in the gap perfectly, and even with the same structure as the rest of the argument. Nice.
C - Good Life -> Rule of Law. Does not help with the stim's conclusion at all. In fact, it is an alt conclusion for the stim that AC B would make valid. It's a different question altogether.
D - suff/nec confusion. Prevails feels like a weird word choice here as well, but idk.
E - suff/nec confusion. It actually directly contradicts the conclusion in the stim, so it's egregiously wrong.
For answer choice C -
Our stim gives us a conclusion:
Individual Freedom -> Rule of Law
AC C gives an alt conclusion:
Good Life -> Rule of Law
AC B is the correct sufficient assumption for both of these conclusions. AC C is incorrect because it is not a sufficient assumption for the argument in the stim as written.
tbh I hate this videos, the way I do this exercises and what I've learned is that there will probably be more than one option that might look correct, so if I cant see all the options how can I be sure to pick a right one?
@SantiagoYanez Are you wanting to see the question before watching the video? If that's what you want, you can click on the "show question" button under the lesson title before watching the video.
Hi, how did individual freedom in the premise cancel out the one in (individual freedom --> Social Integrity) in the premise and we are only left with social integrity?
@DakshMalik
For the sufficient assumption, we don't need ind freedom because it's already established in the stim. We just need to bridge social integrity to rule of law to complete our chain.
Can someone tell me if this line of reasoning/approach has any flaws or if we can use this in SA questions?
All the info seems like it's floating around, so we must capture the argument by identifying the start and end points (but at least the end point of the argument, since we are looking for the missing sufficient assumption). The conclusion helps give us the end point and, in this particular stimulus, the start point.
End point of the entire argument: "rule of law" because "if individual freedom --> rule of law"
In the supporting premises, we are given the idea that if individual freedom --> social integrity . Now we have established a common start point for the argument, but how do we get to the end point "rule of law"? We must somehow link "social integrity" to "rule of law," and we must be cognizant that the argument ends with the "rule of law", so this must be in the necessary condition.
Correct AC: "if social integrity, then rule of law" -- this gives the missing link. Wrong answer A flips this relationship, yet another reason we must clearly identify those start and end points.
For someone who has seen more patterns, is this an approach we can generally use for conditional/formal logic heavy questions? Are there any other patterns/tips anyone has identified for this?
#help #feedback
I created one long chain: good life --> social integrity --> individual freedom --> rule of law.
Is this still correct? I still got the right answer doing this. Did anyone else create this chain?
@JessicaVerdugoLopez I did this too!!
@JessicaVerdugoLopez You are confusion the suff/nec for social integrity and individual freedom. They run in parallel.
Individual freedom -> social integrity
Good Life -> social integrity
They are 2 separate chains. You just got lucky with your mistake.
finally got one of these right
I have become much more successful at these questions when I don't map them.
@CeciliaBurton1 How do you do it instead?
Be mindful of conclusion and premises when diagramming!
Question:
For this question, the "without" and "no" invokes both Group 3 and Group 4 rules.
How do you decide which rule applies?
In this example, after applying the Group 3 rule, the conclusion became:
ROL -> Individual Freedom (which is wrong) and I dont understand how this happened because I applied this rule:
Without = negate and make sufficient - so since ROL is already a negative, it cancels out and becomes a sufficient condition - is this wrong reasoning?
@breezyprabahar944 Your error is considering ROL already negative; it's not. You render it negative only because of "without", giving you "if no ROL then no F".
Regarding using "no" as a group 4 indicator, that doesn't apply here because the word "no" is used simply to describe a predicate, rather than a relationship between a subject and predicate. Consider two sentences:
No current students will graduate. In this context No is a group 4 indicator, and will yield:
If current students then will not graduate (negate necessary); or its contrapositive: if graduate then not current students.
But then consider:
Students belong to no fraternities. Here the word just describes the predicate, rather than describing the relationship of the subject to the predicate. So there's nothing to negate. That's how I understand it, anyway.
@JoelKeenanThat makes sense, thank you!
what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LSAT test writer -> evil
How are you able to decide that a certain premise doesn't matter and ignore it?
@KMK That's a good question! I'm not sure that it's really something you "decide", but rather something you realize when you identify the flaw in the argument and consider the answer choices. In the case of this question, the flaw is the gap between 'rule of law' and 'social integrity'. The conclusion is that the rule of law is necessary for individual freedom. Why? Because social integrity is necessary for individual freedom. Notice the gap? We need the answer choice to link 'rule of law' and 'social integrity'.
In abstract terms: We need A to achieve B because we need C to achieve B. (Where A = rule of law; B = individual freedom; C = social integrity). A must be connected to C.
Whether or not the second premise is there, it doesn't change the fact that there is a gap in the support structure between the first premise and the conclusion. The second premise says that social integrity is necessary to pursue the good life. But this isn't directly connected to the conclusion in the same way as the first premise. It's presented as an "also" rather than a "because".
This video helped me understand SA questions A LOT:
@SaulMcGill Great video; thanks.
@SaulMcGill Thank you! This is the first video that made this make sense
@SaulMcGill I literally teared up because I get it now
@SaulMcGill Thank you for posting that! Very helpful!
@SaulMcGill w video appareciate it
@SaulMcGill At first, I saw how long the video was and was like not viewing it. But on second thought, I watched it, and it made this way clearer. Thank you for sharing this. Well worth the time.
@SaulMcGill Thank you so much!! This question now makes sense.
@SaulMcGill Omg this helped so much. thank you!!!!!
This is what I worked out and found out that I was wrong because I took the conclusion as a premise. My initial (WRONG) instinct was to just take the conditionals out of context. If we take these conditionals out of context they would read:
Individual Freedom→Rule of Law
Individual Freedom →Social Integrity
Good Life → Social integrity
I can combine those to get multiple right answers:
A
There for it is true both that
/Social Integrity→/Individual Freedom→/Rule of Law
/Social Integrity→/Rule of Law
or
There can be no Rule of Law without Social Integrity
AND
B
/Rule of Law→/Individual Freedom→/Social Integrity
/Rule of Law→/Social Integrity
or
There can be no Social Integrity without Rule of Law
AND
C
/Rule of Law→/Individual Freedom→/Social Integrity→/Good Life
/Rule of Law→/Good Life
or
One cannot pursue the good life without the rule of law
You get the point; I was like yeah all these are true and you're an idiot and guessed. BUT these are wrong because it is not what the QUESTION IS ASKING US TO DO. it is saying that given:
Individual Freedom →Social Integrity
And
Good Life → Social integrity
Prove that:
Individual Freedom→Rule of Law
is true
WE CANNOT USE "Individual Freedom→Rule of Law" TO PROVE THAT "Individual Freedom→Rule of Law" IS TRUE. The only way to do that without simply declaring it is to connect something to social integrity. that is as simple as drawing a line from social integrity to rule of law.
Social Integrity→Rule of Law
or
There can be no social integrity without rule of law. B
This is the simplest way to get to that conclusion in this argument.
TLDR: Don't try and use the conclusion in proving the conclusion.
can someone explain in simple terms why it is not C, like i get why its B but honestly the lawgic is making this so confusing for me
@imbobe29
Most simple
C only includes premises. The conclusion was, "There can be no individual freedom without the rule of law, for..." "For" is a premise indicator word and functions the same as "because." This means the rest of the sentence is only premises. Since the goal is to "connect the premises to the conclusion," an answer is automatically wrong if it doesn't address both parts.
More in depth
The lesson describes C as a "sufficiency-necessity mistake": it confuses a necessary condition (required for argument to work) with a sufficient condition (guarantees argument works). Both choices connect to "without the rule of law" from the conclusion, but C tries to connect the necessary condition, "the good life." This is necessary for the argument to work, but it isn't what we need to guarantee the outcome to have "individual freedom." We do need "social integrity" (in B) to guarantee "individual freedom."
@LMANNELIN721GM this was the best explanation. THANK YOU! I finally understand it.
@imbobe29 I think another way to think of it is AC C gives an alt conclusion:
Good Life -> Rule of Law
AC B is the correct sufficient assumption for both of the conclusions. AC C is incorrect because it is not a sufficient assumption for the argument in the stim as written.
How do we know that "no" is not an indicator word that triggers a group 4 application?
I think you could have used group 4 application here as well. The stimulus says "there is no individual freedom without social integrity". "No" is group 4, negate necessary and "without" is group 4, negate sufficient. So that would be:
/social integrity -> / individual freedom
Contrapositive: individual freedom -> social integrity
The contrapositive using that logic technique gives you the same thing J.Y had.
I keep getting them correct, but honestly I don't understand the lawgic for these type of questions? I have intuativley gotten the answer right, but the explanation is making no sense and I can't apply lawgic... anyone else having this issue?
same
you guys are born lawyers! Cherish the win!!
normally i think intuitively as well without lawgic but this one got me. you think you could explain how u got it without lawgic?
Started off the lesson getting every single question right, then after the alien questions I started getting them all wrong. This is the first one I get right. Thank f*cking god.