I can do this and so can you: 170+!!!

Makes sense to me now, thank you!! :)

Super helpful, thank you so much!!

I can try to answer this: "Plant life cannot survive without atmospheric carbon" tells us that if there is no atmospheric carbon, then plant life cannot survive (/ac → /s).

It does not say that if plant life cannot not survive, then there is no atmospheric carbon/it is because of a lack of atmospheric carbon (there are many other things that could cause plants to not survive despite the presence of atmospheric carbon like fire, overwatering, uprooting etc.)

So the initial condition "if plant life cannot survive, then there is no atmospheric carbon (/s → /ac)" does not make sense. I believe you are confusing the sufficient and necessary conditions here. Hope this helps!

#feedback I am confused about what the contrapositive which was solved via Lawgic means in English, it would be very helpful to include a translation, if possible. Thank you!

#help #feedback "if N or O is not adopted, then M cannot be adopted" What is this statement's contrapositive in English? I.e., what is M → N and O's application in English? Does it mean that if M was adopted then both N and O were adopted? Are we reading the "or" in the first statement as "and" or inclusive "or"?

I def overcomplicated this but my explanation for the answer is as follows. It is not entirely correct, so if anyone has an easier/shorter/more straightforward explanation, please let me know, ty!

Q: Which of the following does not weaken but rather strengthens or is irrelevant to the argument that cave paintings are not descriptions of painters' diets?

The premise of the counterargument to the predominant theory relies on an assumption that must be true if the predominant theory is presupposed to be correct.

Objectives:

Find options which weaken the argument that [cave paintings are not descriptions of painters' diets]. Those are not the right answer.

Find options which either strenghten or are irrelevant to the argument that cave paintins are descriptions of painters' diets. This is the right answer.

We dislike answers that suggest that the predominant theory can be false and/or that the counterargument is weakened/likely false. We like answers where PT is irrelevant/strenghtened/can be true as long as CA could be true/is irrelevant or strengthened.

PT/CA combo which indicate wrong answer:

W/W

I/W

W/I

PT/CA combo which indicant correct answer:

I/S

I/I

S/I

S/S

A. Once on these islands, the cave painters hunted and ate land animals.

Predoominant theory: is irrelevant

Counterargument: weakens/is likely false because it does not suggest that cave painters ate fish, althought the option does not say "the cave painters only hunted and ate land animals", so it is possible that fish was a part of their diets. If the assumption that they ate fish is true, then PT could be true, if false then it could be false, but making the assumption is a leap.

Overall: weakens.

This weakens the counterargument because this suggests that the painters ate land animals instead of fishes, which explains why there are no fish paintings.

B. Parts of the cave paintings on the islands did not survive the centuries.

Predominant theory: is irrelevant

Counterargument: weakens/could be false, the truth of this statement would depend on the assumption about painters' fish consumption being correct.

Overall: weakens.

This weakens the argument that the predominant theory is false. However, the argument that the cave paintings were descriptions of the painters' diets, because they had to, at some point, eat fish but there were no fish paintings in the cave could be true.

C. The cave paintings that were discovered on the islands depicted many land animals.

Predominant theory: is irrelevant, it may or may not suggest that the painters ate many land animals

Counterargument: is irrelevant, it makes no suggestions about whether cave painters ate fish

Overall: irrelevant.

D.

PT: irrelevant

CA: weakens/is likely false

overall: weakens

E.

PT: weakens/is false, provides alternate theory

CA: irrelevant

overall: weakens

#help #feedback This is a really good point! Your translation does seem to be correct based on the symbols and their accompanying lawgic translations in the 7Sage answer; the lawgic conditionals and their corresponding English translations done by 7S here are inconsistent in their use of defined concepts.

The only way the English translations provided by 7Sage make sense is if we picked the concepts "flower in the garden are blooming" (FGB) and "in the winter" (W).

FGB → /W

W→/FGB

If the flowers in the garden are blooming, then it is not winter

If it is winter, then flowers in the garden are not blooming.

However, in doing so we are not separating the sentence into subject "flowers in the garden" and predicate "bloom in winter". The difference between your translation and 7Sage's translation appears to be pretty big so I am hoping we can get some clarification.

It is possible that the translation is an error on the part of 7Sage writers?

#feedback I think there is a typo in the answer to 1.1, it says "There are no holidays to in the month of August" under Logically Identical Variants. The "to" should be removed.

Hi! I think I can help. The first step is to identify that all but the first and last lines are examples since they involve observations about specific people doing a specific thing as generally described by the first and last sentences.

Once this has been identified, you can use the [conclusion] because [premise] template to see which of the first and last sentence fits where.

"Jazz consists largely of voicelike horns and hornlike voices because/as shown by the fact that the best jazz singers use their voices much as horn players use their instruments" makes a lot more sense than "The best jazz singers use their voices much as horn players use their instruments because/as shown by the fact that jazz consists largely of voicelike horns and hornlike voices."

Hope this helps!

I agree with this! #feedback

There is a huge possibility that I am misunderstanding what the sociologist is trying to say here lol. But in essence, my reasoning for why "this view ignores..." is not the main conclusion is: economists' view included to introduce refutal, refutal introduced to introduce distinction, distinction introduced to support conclusion.

This is how I framed the stimulus to make it clearer:

"Some economists hold that unregulated markets should accompany democratic sovereignty because they let people vote with their money. However, this view ignores the crucial distinction between the private consumer and the public citizen which is that in the marketplace, the private consumer's question is "What do I want" whereas in the voting booth, the same individual acting as a public citizen asks "What do we want?" Therefore, because of this distinction of questions, it can be concluded that supporters of political democracy (as public citizens) can also support marketplace regulation (as private consumers)."

In short, the economists' view is just mentioned to provide context, and its refutal is not the main point or conclusion of the paragraph. The economists' view's refutal, "this view ignores..." is simply used to introduce the main premise or the "distinction". The part with the questions asked in the marketplace and voting booth is an intermediary, it is a specific application/form of a phenomenon, and it supports the main conclusion, which is the phenomenon about the behavior of the subset of people.

- If the stimulus was reframed as follows, then the "this view ignores..." would be the main conclusion, but its main, explicit message completely changes:

"Some economists hold that unregulated markets should accompany democratic sovereignty because they let people vote with their money. However, this view ignores the crucial distinction between the private consumer and the public citizen which is that in the marketplace, the question is "What do I want" whereas in the voting booth, the question is always "What do we want?"

- If the stimulus was reframed like this, "this view ignores..." would still be the main conclusion, although it does not really make sense because there is a huge gap between the "distinction" and the duality of a person simultaneously acting as a public citizen and a private consumer. This shows that the sociologist introduces the distinction only tell us more about this dual behavior (aka main conclusion) instead of trying to be the main point:

"Some economists hold that unregulated markers should accompany democratic sovereignty because they let people vote with their money. However, this view ignores the crucial distinction between the private consumer and the public citizen because supporters of political democracy can also support marketplace regulation."

I clearly struggled with this one a lot too haha. Let me know if this does not make sense, happy to discuss further! :)

Yes, that is usually a good indicator of conclusions, although sometimes the LSAT writers will use such indicators before a sub-conclusion but not before the main conclusion in some complex arguments, so make sure to keep an eye out for that!

I am interested too!

#feedback I completely agree!!

#HELP Hello, I am so lost. Is this the full and comprehensive list of contrapositives for conditionals with conjunctions? And are my following summaries of the functions of or and and correct?

A and B → C

/C → /A or /B

A or B → C

/C → /A and /B

A → B and C

/B or /C →/A

A → B or C

/B and /C → /A

For the and conditionals, regardless of whether it is in the sufficient clause or necessary part of the condition, there is only one (1) way for the condition to be fulfilled:

- If both elements on the left and right of "and" are true, independent of whether it is in the sufficient or necessary clause.

For the or conditionals, regardless of whether it is in the sufficient or necessary part of the condition, there are three (3) ways for the condition to be fulfilled:

- If the element on the left of "or" is true but the element on the right of "or" is not, independent of whether it is in the sufficient or necessary clause.

- If the element on the right of "or" is true but the element on the left of "or" it not, independent of whether it is in the sufficient or necessary clause.

- If both the elements on the left and right of "or" are true, independent of whether it is in the sufficient or necessary clause.

I was really confused about why E is wrong here but I think I figured out a way to explain it in straightforward terms:

My top choices for this were B and E; B because it is directly supported by the stim, no assumptions, inferences, leaps etc. needed.

For E to be correct, we would have to assume that it has been at least a few years since the antibiotics were used against bacteria X. If this was clearly provided as part of option E or if we make this assumption (bit of a stretch for this kind of question), E would also be a correct answer.

However, B gives us the exactly what we need (all claims fully supported by stim) without having us make any assumptions, thus making it the most correct answer. Essentially, if there are two options where one requires no assumptions and another is almost right but leaves some gaps open for us to fill in, then the former is the best choice.

Does this make sense? Please let me know if I’m thinking about this in the wrong way!

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