PT63.S1.Q10 - ms. sandstrom's newspaper column

CinnamonTea

Hi all,

Blind reviewing the aforementioned Prep Test and having trouble with PT.63.S.1.Q.10. I almost never have these kinds of very basic questions below (i.e., what exactly is the conclusion?) But bear with me, I found this problem sneaky.

1) "Thus, Ms. Sandstrom should pay for this damage if, as the Mendelssohn claim, she could have reasonably expected that the column would lead people to damage the Mendel's farm."
Is this entire last sentence of the stimulus the conclusion? Or is the conclusion only the first clause: "Thus, Ms. Sandstrom should pay for the damage"? Does that have something to do with why A is the right answer?

2) Why is D incorrect?

Note: I've already watched JY's explanation videos but would appreciate if someone could thoroughly break the stimulus down and answer the 2 questions I have above. Thank you SO much in advance!
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-63-section-1-question-10/

Sami

Hey : )

@CinnamonTea said:

1) "Thus, Ms. Sandstrom should pay for this damage if, as the Mendelssohn claim, she could have reasonably expected that the column would lead people to damage the Mendel's farm."
Is this entire last sentence of the stimulus the conclusion? Or is the conclusion only the first clause: "Thus, Ms. Sandstrom should pay for the damage"?

So you are right. Only the first part is the conclusion. "Ms. Sandstrom should pay for the damage".

Why should I believe that? (premise) Because she could have reasonably expected that the column would lead people to damage the Mendel's farm.
*This is one of those sentences where they wrote the conclusion and premise together by only giving us the conclusion indicator but hiding the premise indicator by the word "if and using a comma" to separate them.

Does that have something to do with why A is the right answer?

2) Why is D incorrect?

I think both questions could be answered together. So this is a sufficient assumption question. Our task is to find an answer choice where we can conclude our conclusion 100% from our premise.
So our premise was: Ms. Sandstrom could have reasonably expected that the column would lead people to damage the Mendel's farm
Conclusion: She should pay for this.
That's it: we want an answer choice that connects our premise to our conclusion. T= So we want soemething like: If there is expectation of damage that one's action might lead other people to do then one must pay for that damage that was caused by other people. . That's precisely what answer choice "A" does.

If one could have reasonable expected that the action would lead other people to cause damage then one should pay for that damage....(bingo!). That's exactly what we are looking for. Something that connected our premise to our conclusion. Notice it's essential that in our sufficient we talk about expectation of damage and in necessary about payment for that damage. Answer choice had its sufficient condition indicator later, but that's just sentence structure. Logically it would mean the same thing.

Answer choice D is talking about Ms. Sandstorm knowing about inciting the action that could result in the damage. But does she have to pay for that damage? This answer choice does not talk about that. So it doesn't make our argument above 100% valid. We need to conclude that if there was an expectation of damage one must pay for it. This answer choice just leaves us hanging.

Let me know if this helped : )

CinnamonTea

Super helpful, thanks Sami! 2 more questions:
1) Could you give me some examples of conclusions that have similar (conclusion + premise) structures? You said "Thus.... if...." is one of these. Are there any others?

2) Also (I'm sure this must be the case but I can't think of one off the top of my head) what are some examples of conditional conclusions?

Similarly, how would one the difference between the #1 and #2 above? (I.e., how could you tell if it was a conclusion + premise, as in PT63.S1.Q.10 asked above, OR if it's a conditional conclusion?)

Thanks in advance!