"Only if" is a necessary condition indicator. It's confusing the sufficient condition to be a necessary condition. It talks about paying for damages only if certain conditions are met. These are conditions that, if satisfied, make the rule have no consequence. And if these conditions are not met, then we end up with the opposite of what we want. So basically, the rule doesn't give us any useful information because either way, it doesn't lead to the outcome we're looking for. Whereas (A) does.
Hi guys! I was wondering if anyone would be down to study together. I'm taking the October LSAT and it's coming up pretty quickly. I'd love to review with someone! Lmk, my schedule is pretty flexible but it'd have to be somewhere midtown, maybe like a cafe or something. I go to JJAY!
This took me so long to understand, but I think I got it. In the given sentence, the necessary condition is "Students are cited as 'late' if they arrive more than five minutes past the last ring of the homeroom bell." This condition is necessary for a student to be cited as "late." But that condition alone doesn't guarantee that Kumar is late because we need a sufficient condition. That's we couldn't make a definitive inference with the other statement (he came 17 min after the last ring). Right?
In the conditional statement, the sufficient condition is "Kumar has been properly cited as 'late'." This condition is sufficient to conclude that Kumar arrived more than five minutes past the last ring of the homeroom bell. In other words, if Kumar has been properly cited as "late," it is sufficient to infer that he arrived more than five minutes past the last ring of the homeroom bell.
I'm still confused about one thing though. A necessary condition alone can't guarantee the outcome but is meeting the sufficient condition alone, enough to guarantee the outcome? Do you need to satisfy both conditions to make a definitive inference, or is satisfying the sufficient condition enough too? #help
Something I like to do when I'm not 100% sure about an answer choice in these question types is to negate it. If you negate the answer choice and the argument falls apart, then it's the right answer. Doing this shows what's necessary for the argument to be logically valid.