Self-study
A society in which there are many crimes, such as thefts and murders, should not be called “lawless. ████ ██ ██ █████ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ██████ ██ █ ███████ ███████████ █████ ██████████████ ██ █████████████ █████ ██████████ █████ ████████ █ ███████ ████ ███ ██ ████ ███ ██ ███████ ███████ ██ ████ ███ ██ ███████ █ ███████ ███████ ██████ ██████████ ██ █ █████████ ████████ ██ ████ ████ ████ ██████ █ ███████ ███████ ██████ ████████ ██ ██████ ████████████
Structure: Counter-Argument
This argument rejects some people's use of the term "lawless" to describe a society where there are many crimes. This is because the ending "-less" means "without," so a lawless society would be one without laws. But, according to the stimulus, if there are no laws, there can be no crimes, since there are no laws to break, so a lawless society would ultimately also be a crimeless one. The argument concludes that a better term than "lawless" for a society with many crimes would be "crimeful."
Analysis: Potential Inferences
For a Must Be True question, it's always useful to look for instances of conditional logic in the stimulus, because conditional logic lends itself to the clearest inferences. In this case, the most obvious instance of conditional logic is the principle the argument appeals to, that "a society that has no laws has no crimes." If you skim the answer choices — never a bad idea — you'll see that they all seem to be looking for a potential inference from this principle, so it's important to make sure we understand it. We can diagram this principle as:
/laws → /crimes
The contrapositive of this principle would be:
crimes → laws
We can translate this into English as "if a society has any crimes, it must have laws." The answer choices will test our understanding of this inference.
21.
If the statements in the ███████ ███ █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ██ █████
a
A society that ███ ████ ███ ███████
This diagrams to:
laws → crimes
That doesn't follow from the principle in the stimulus. If we consider the contrapositive of that principle (crimes → laws), we'll see that this answer choice actually confuses the necessary and sufficient conditions. So (A) is incorrect.
b
A society that ███ ██ ██████ ███ ██ █████
This diagrams to:
/crimes → /laws
This confuses the necessary and sufficient conditions from the principle in the stimulus. So (B) is incorrect.
c
A society that ███ ████ ████ ███ ████ ███████
The discussion of what "many" means for conditional logic will be more relevant for (E). For (C), notice that even if we diagram this out "as is," the direction of the logic between "laws" and "crimes" is still incorrect:
many laws → many crimes
The principle we drew above, with its contrapositive, doesn't let us draw any conclusions that look like this: we can't start with the presence of any laws and conclude anything about the presence of any crimes. We can only say that if there are no laws, there are no crimes. And so if knowing that there is any amount of laws still doesn't let us conclude anything about any amount of crimes, knowing that there are "many" laws certainly won't let us conclude that there are "many" crimes. So (C) is incorrect.
d
A society that ███ ████ ██████ ███ ████ █████
Correct. This is a very tricky answer choice, because the "some" might make you think we are dealing with the logic of intersecting sets. But "some" here is actually interchangeable with "any." Remember that "some," on the LSAT, means "at least one" and has no upper limit: in other words, any amount, as opposed to no amount or none. So what (D) is saying is that a society with any amount of crimes must have at least one law. But this says the same thing as the contrapositive of the principle in the stimulus, which didn't specify an amount of crimes or an amount of laws. It only said that if there are crimes, there must be laws; the presence of crimes (any amount) guarantees the presence of some amount of laws:
crimes → laws
Because it rephrases the contrapositive of the principle in the stimulus, (D) is a valid inference.
e
A society that ███ ████ ██████ ███ ████ █████
Unlike (C), (E) actually gets the general direction of the logic right: we infer the presence of laws from the presence of crimes, as the contrapositive of the principle in the stimulus does. The problem is that it tries to be too specific: it insists that the presence of "many" crimes is an indicator of "many" laws:
many crimes → many laws
Notice that this is much more specific than what we can infer from the stimulus. The contrapositive of the principle in the stimulus just tells us that if there are (any) crimes, then there must be (some amount of) laws:
crimes → laws
But this doesn't specify a specific amount of either crimes or laws. By this principle, it could be true that even if there are few crimes, there are many laws, or even if there are many crimes, there are only a few laws (maybe there aren't many laws, but people break them all the time). The fact that this principle is about indeterminate amounts is why it can be expressed with "some," as in (D). But "many" is too specific, so (E) does not necessarily have to be true.