PT37.S2.Q12 - rosen: one cannot prepare

TheBatman

Okay, I can't get logic for the life of me lol!

One cannot prepare a good meal (GM) from bad food (/F),

GM --> F (my answer. "/F" is negated because of the word "cannot").

GM --> Not /F (official answer).

Produce good food (F) from bad soil (/S)

F --> S (my answer I negated "S" because of the word "cannot" which is connected to the necessary from the first sentence).

F --> Not /F (official answer. Where the hell did "/F" come from?).

Maintain good soil (S) without good farming (Farm),

/S --> /Farm (my answer. I negated "S" because of the word "without," and negated "Farm" because of the word "cannot" which is connected to the necessary from the first sentence).

S --> Farm (official answer).

Or have good farming (Farm) without a culture that places value on the proper maintenance of all its natural resources so that needed supplies are always available (Maintenance).

/Farm --> /Maintenance (my answer. I negated "Farm" because of the word "without", and negated "Maintenance" because of the word "cannot" which is connected to the necessary from the first sentence).

Farm --> Maintenance (official answer).

Take a look at my translation from English to conditional logic symbols. What's my problem, and what am I doing wrong!?!??!!

I totally suck at translating English into conditional logic symbols. I've got some good advice from 7Sagers, but any more advice on how to improve translating English into conditional logic symbols?
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-37-section-2-question-12/

Sami

@TheBatman said:
Okay, I can't get logic for the life of me lol!

One cannot prepare a good meal (GM) from bad food (/F),

GM --> F (my answer. "/F" is negated because of the word "cannot").

This looks correct. : )

Produce good food (F) from bad soil (/S)

F --> S (my answer I negated "S" because of the word "cannot" which is connected to the necessary from the first sentence).

This also looks fine. : )

Maintain good soil (S) without good farming (Farm),

/S --> /Farm (my answer. I negated "S" because of the word "without," and negated "Farm" because of the word "cannot" which is connected to the necessary from the first sentence).

Here you cannot perform both operations "without and cannot" together. You have to pick one and keep the other. So if the sentence is "You cannot maintain good soil without good farming" and you pick to write it in conditional by using "without" you have to keep the word cannot as it is and keep it with "cannot maintain good soil". Without is negate sufficient so you end up negating "cannot maintain good soil", this will lead you to:
S-->F
(It would have been the same had you used the word cannot, which means negate necessary, you would have to keep the word without attached to good farming. It would end up translating the same way.

Or have good farming (Farm) without a culture that places value on the proper maintenance of all its natural resources so that needed supplies are always available (Maintenance).

/Farm --> /Maintenance (my answer. I negated "Farm" because of the word "without", and negated "Maintenance" because of the word "cannot" which is connected to the necessary from the first sentence).

This is the same mistake you made above. You cannot do "without" ,negate sufficient, and "cannot", negate necessary, all at the same time. You have to pick one and keep the other as it is.

If you do that you would get
F-->M

I hope this helped.

TheBatman

THANK YOU!

TheBatman

@Sami

So help me understand. I needed to negate anything that is attached to "without," which I get, but isn't "without" a negate sufficient?

Like the words "until", "unless", and "or" are negate sufficient. If we replaced "without" with any of these other words, it would have a different impact on the sentence?

Is it that we don't negate anything attached to "until", "unless", and "or," because they are a different word than "without?"