Self-study
Hi! Now that the old PT's have been renumbered starting at 101-158 I'm not sure what to use for drilling, full length sections, and full length PT's. I'm trying my best not to run out of study material, any advice?
PT Questions
rayandarwiche15393
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rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, Aug 01 2024
You’re so welcome!!
rayandarwiche15393
Sunday, Jul 21 2024
#feedback Can we always interpret "X is dependent upon Y" as X requires Y? I took it as, the existence of moral order depends on whether human souls are immortal, and if they are then we can conclude moral order exists.
rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, Jul 18 2024
HI! E is incorrect because of the part that says "imperfect". If the spirit is imperfect we would not be able to conclude that the spirit is not a material body. Answer choice E is correct in saying the spirit is not divisible, that would be a sufficient assumption.
Think of it like this:
Major Premise: MB ---> /P
Conclusion: Spirit ---> /MB
From this major premise alone we cannot reach the conclusion, something is missing (the sufficient assumption). Remember, the sufficient assumption would make it enough for us to reach our conclusion.
We're trying to reach the conclusion /MB which is in the necessary condition side of the arrow in the conclusion. How do we reach this in the premise? We take the contrapositive of the major premise.
Major Premise Contrapositive: P ---> /MB
Now, if we want to reach the conclusion Spirit ---> /MB one way to do it is just show that a spirit is P (perfect).
Answer choice E saying the spirit is imperfect is a red flag and would eliminate it right away.
Let me know if this was helpful or if you need me to explain anything else!
rayandarwiche15393
Saturday, Jun 22 2024
Of course! We can use the example in this question.
In this question, the stimulus states "One is likely to feel comfortable approaching a stranger IF the stranger is of one's approximate age." The conclusion in this question is "Therefore, long-term friends of probably of the same approximate age as each other."
The reason why this argument is flawed is because it draws the conclusion that given the premises in the stimulus, we can therefore conclude we met the sufficient condition (in this case that is "if the stranger is of one's approximate age"). However, we can never draw a conclusion that we met a sufficient condition (positive form). The only conclusion we can validly draw about a sufficient condition is that we failed it (negative form), given that we failed the necessary condition.
Let's say we have the sentence "If you're a cat, then you're a mammal." in lawgic it would look like this cat ---> mammal
The conclusions we can validly draw from the conditional statement are the following:
(1) The premises tell us we satisfied the sufficient condition (X is a cat). Therefore, we can validly conclude the necessary condition (X is a mammal)
(2) The premises tell us we failed the necessary condition (X is not a mammal). Therefore, we can validly conclude that we failed the sufficient condition (X is not a cat).
What we cannot do is say the following:
(1) We failed the sufficient condition, therefore we failed the necessary condition.
(2) We satisfied/met the necessary condition, therefore we met the sufficient condition.
These are invalid argument forms.
That is all to say that you can only ever draw a conclusion about the sufficient condition in the negative form (we failed the sufficient condition) but never that we met the sufficient condition (positive form). If an argument draws a conclusion that "we can therefore conclude the sufficient condition" it is a flawed argument.
It might help to look at like this:
X ---> Y
/Y ---> /X
When looking at this conditional statement you notice that the only conclusion you can draw about the sufficient condition is /X. A few lessons back in the PSA question type we were told to look and see if the conclusion is in the necessary condition. Here the only way to get the sufficient condition onto the necessary condition side of the arrow is to contrapose it back and therefore only conclude /X
Let me know if this helps, if not I'm always willing to explain it differently!
rayandarwiche15393
Friday, Jun 14 2024
Thank you for your feedback!!
rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, Jun 13 2024
#feedback Would it be fair to view this through the lens of an argument by analogy?
rayandarwiche15393
Sunday, Jun 09 2024
#feedback Is it safe to say we cannot draw a positive conclusion about a sufficient condition other than in the negative form (meaning we can validly conclude we failed the sufficient condition if we failed the necessary condition) because in order to draw a conclusion that the sufficient condition is definitely met (as in this question) would mean it has to be in the necessary condition side of the arrow. I remember a few question types back where we were told a quick way to check if the answer choice was correct/worth keeping was by checking if our conclusion is in the necessary condition or otherwise we cannot reach our desired conclusion.
I hope I'm framing my question in an understandable way.
rayandarwiche15393
Sunday, May 19 2024
#feedback I chose D because I thought if that was assumed it would make the conclusion true. Since "if she could have reasonably expected... then she should pay" answer choice says she did reasonably expect therefore we can draw the conclusion that she should pay. How is this method of thinking wrong?
rayandarwiche15393
Wednesday, May 15 2024
Hi!
I had the same thought process at first but quickly realized that D is speaking in general terms and doesn't explicitly state that this applies in our current situation (the stimulus). Also, as a general rule it's good to remember that argument by analogy will more likely than not always appeal to the relationship between the two things being analogized. In this case it could be either the motorists or the other cities. Because argument by analogy is depending on the similarities to make its point (the conclusion), the best way to weak or strengthen that support to attack the dissimilarities between them. Answer choice D does not do that because EVEN IF it did apply to our situation in the stimulus, it only addresses the city council of the city in question and does nothing to address other cities.
Hope this helps!
rayandarwiche15393
Saturday, May 11 2024
Hey!
I thought about it this way, the 12-year study contained 20,000 subjects while the 24-year study contained 1,500 subjects. Answer choice D says HALF of the subjects in the 12-year study (so 10,000) received a placebo supplement, meaning it was fake. That still leaves us with the other 10,000 subjects of the 12-year study that the supplement had no effect on. This still doesn't help resolve the discrepancy because it tells us nothing about the remaining 10,000 and why the supplement had no effect. It's still 1,500 to 10,000 ratio between the two studies which leaves us with the same question we started with, why did it have no effect on 10,000 people?
I hope this helps!
rayandarwiche15393
Friday, May 10 2024
Hi! B weakens the argument because if we take it to be true, as the question stem tells us to do, it explains why Jocko didn't make loud food barks on day 2. The way his weakens the argument is by getting us to not believe the authors original hypothesis that Jocko learned his lesson and didn't bark so the other chimpanzees don't take his food. Remember the hypothesis-conclusion already offered in the stimulus is not be taken as "true". It is only as true as the premises offer it support. So if we are given an answer choice that could just as well explain the phenomena in the stimulus, it weakens the authors original hypothesis.
rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, May 09 2024
#feedback For answer choice A, that leads us to assume that the ethics violations had no affect on the opinions of those that previously thought Mayor Walker was performing good. But is this a reasonable assumption? To me it seems like it's too big of an assumption to make.
rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, May 02 2024
Hi! Technically we are sticking to the stimulus while making these assumptions because neither Tanner nor Saldana explicitly state that strong debating skills are what makes winning an election more likely, they don't even hint at it, let alone it being the only factor that could increase likelihood on winning. Therefore, the assumption that it could be some other factors such as campaigns, funding, etc. is reasonable. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, May 02 2024
Hi! I believe this is because you have to subscribe to Lawhub Advantage on the LSAC website. It's $115/year. Hope this helps.
rayandarwiche15393
Tuesday, Apr 16 2024
Hi! I found for this question it's easier to stick to indicator words.
The sentence states, "Opera companies have to produce the most popular operas, unless they receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts."
The words "have to" could be considered a Group 2 indicator (necessary condition). You could easily swap out "have to" for "must" and it'll mean the same thing. The sentence would read like this, "Opera companies MUST produce the most popular operas, unless they receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts."
This is more digestible. Now we can break the sentence into two parts. The part before "unless" being the rule and the part following "unless" being the exception.
Rule: Opera companies MUST produce the most popular operas
Exception: they receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts
The rule can be translated into lawgic using Group 2 indicator rule.
Rule: opera company ---> produce-most-pop-opera
Hope this helps!!
rayandarwiche15393
Thursday, Jun 01 2023
Hi! I'm also interested in joining your group, thank you!
#feedback Hi! Does it matter that the RC section is using fairly new tests? I was under the impression that we should be saving those for full length PTs and full timed sections.