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Does "Many" = "Some" or "More than one" ?
youbbyun
Alum Member
Does "Many" = "Some" or "More than one" ?
7sage says "many" = "some." Thus, "many" can include "one."
But other resources have said "many" means 2 or more. Thus, "many" would NOT include "one."
So does "many" include one or not?
I think this is important because for PT 76.4.12, (I think that) whether answer choice A is right or wrong depends on what definition of "many" you have.
IF we assume that "many" includes "one," and that the negation of "many" is "none," then the way LSAC uses "many" in answer choice A of PT 76.4.12 is INCONSISTENT. In this context, it assumes "many" is "two or more." This is HUGE, because if you assume "many" equals "one," it changes Answer choice A from a WRONG answer choice to a RIGHT answer choice.
So LSAC seems to be inconsistent with how it uses "many."
Any suggestions or advice appreciated. thank you.
Comments
Yes, but you're half right! "Many" = "Some" = "At least one."
Hi @username_hello I just left a comment addressing PT76.4.12 for you in the other thread, but basically the reason answer A is wrong isn't because of the word "many." @rnwanguma has it right. Hopefully my explanation made sense.
Actually, "many" does NOT mean the same thing as "some". It's a serious deficiency in many curricula that they say "many" = "some". Many is subjective, but it does mean more than just one. The reason people say "many" = "some" is that for the purpose of drawing inferences from combining a statement that uses "many" with another statement that uses some other quantifier, "many" is TREATED AS "some". This is because "many" doesn't mean "most". In an effort to emphasize that "many" is TREATED AS "some", many curricula say that "many" MEANS "some". This results in the exact problem you identified in PT76 - if "many" meant "some" the negation of "many" = 0. But that's not true. The negation of "many" = "not many".
@anonclsstudent
o gotcha. Omygoodness that is so confusing. I feel like the Curriculum really needs to be clarified to what "many" means. Because in some instances (like the one i mentioned), "many" is specifically defined as "2 or more."
Thus, if you interpret "many" to be "1 or more," and you negate it to "none," you'll get the question wrong (like in PT 76.4.12).
@anonclsstudent Good point. Yeah I could see where that would be a problem if you negated "many" to "none."
There are a lot of detailed, interesting points in the comments section under the "Many = Some" lesson: https://7sage.com/lesson/many-some/
I think for me what it comes down to is that JY is right, and that many = some. But, it all depends on context. In daily, colloquial speech, we wouldn't use many to mean 1. It generally implies at least 2. (We always pluralize the noun that is the many: many apples, many cats, etc.) We think it to mean more than 1. But LSAT grammar and meanings are not the same as for daily English usage and implied meanings.
Someone in the comments on the lesson above gave this example (which is great): say you own a small business with 2 employees, 1 female and 1 male. Say you are filling out a tax form and are asked, "Are many of your employees female?" Well, yes. 1 out of 2 = half of your employees are female. I would check "yes" on that question. Maybe you only have 1 employee, who is a female. Definitely yes then, all of your employees are female. In that case, 1 = many. I would think that the LSAT may not exclusively use many in that context (and I think it would likely be rare, if ever, that they truly use the word many to mean 1 - they probably avoid it because of that ambiguity), but I can see a case where 1 could equal "many," and the LSAT would be open to using it in that way.
That said, also as @eRetaker mentioned, answer choice A in that specific question isn't wrong because of the usage of "many." It's wrong because that isn't a necessary assumption for that stimulus.
@"Leah M B" thanks for following up.
I actually think whether A is right or wrong depends on how you define "many." If you define "many" as "some," and you negate "some" to "none," then Answer choice A wrecks the argument. Do it yourself and see that it wrecks the argument. It completely destroys the relationship between the premises and the conclusion. Because it wrecks the argument, it should be the right answer choice.
But it's not the right answer choice. So what the LSAC writers were going for here is that "many" means 2 or more. So the negation of not "2 or more" is 1 or less. And this negation does not wreck the argument, but leaves it intact.
What are your thoughts?
thanks!
@username_hello
Ah, I see where you are coming from on it. I've never really stuck to the negating method, personally. It does for sure work sometimes, probably a lot of the time. But I think in this scenario, negating it isn't the best way to approach it (but that may be my bias, because I never really used that approach much).
Most of the problem with A is that it's really vague. Just the fact that it needs to be a necessary assumption means that vagueness is a clue that it is wrong. How many of the scents is it even talking about? Some? 3? 1? 897? It doesn't make sense that some, or even many, scents having a certain characteristic would be a necessary statement. It basically says, "maybe all." That is just not helpful. It maybe even is describing scents that have nothing to do with lavender. That can't be a necessary assumption for this argument if it is not even talking about the whole point of the argument. So, that's really why A is wrong.
I would like to re-iterate that 'many' does not mean 'some'. The reason it is said to mean some is that in the context of drawing inferences from multiple quantified statements, it allows the same kind of inferences that "some" allows. In addition, people confuse "many" with "most", which is why it's easier to just say that "many" is the same as "some".
"Many" is subjective in that it means a 'large' number, but it cannot mean only 1, regardless of the context. Proportion has nothing to do with it - "many" does not imply a small or large proportion, and a large proportion does not automatically justify the use of "many". "Are many of your grandparents serial killers? It doesn't matter that 1 out of 4 of your grandparents are serial killers, it would not be linguistically correct to answer "yes" to that question.
Consider the following set of statements:
Some As are B.
All As are C.
We could conclude that some Bs are C. But we cannot conclude that many Bs are C. This idea has definitely been tested on the LSAT (there's a problem about whether a society in which "many" crimes are committed must have "many" laws - it doesn't, because many people could be violating only a single law.)
While we're here, let's not forget that there are a lot of other words that LSAT curricula says means "some" but actually does not. Every single words retains its own meaning - it's just that for the purpose of drawing inferences from multiple quantified statements, they should be treated as "some". Several doesn't mean 1. A few doesn't mean one. Often doesn't mean a single time. But you can think of them as "some" so that you understand that you can't draw "most"-type inferences from them. LSAT curricula just doesn't want to complicate things by having a "several" arrow or a "many" arrow or a "a few" arrow. Instead, they say to translate all of that to a "some" arrow. But this doesn't mean that those words literally mean exactly the same thing that "some" does.
going forward, remember that "many" is defined as large number. It is not defined as "at least one". It is also not defined as "at least two". We can conclude FROM "many" that there is more than one, but the word itself retains more meaning than merely "more than one" - it means a large number. And the negation of "many" is NOT none. It is "not many", which means "not a large number".
@anonclsstudent We may have to agree to disagree, but I do in fact disagree with a lot of your post here.
First, do you have the question reference from the example you gave of the LSAT's use of many? I would like to read the original. From what you summed up here, I don't think that that example disproves the fact that many is equivalent to some for the purposes of the LSAT. I emphasize that because, as I mentioned above, sometimes the LSAT uses words differently than we do in spoken/written standard English. I agree with you that as I am speaking with someone, I would never use "many" to mean only 1. However, I don't think that says anything about how the LSAT uses the term. The LSAT intentionally uses our own biases against us at times.
Whether or not "many" can equal 1, I absolutely disagree with you that many specifically means a large number. For instance, an example 7sage uses is: say there are 3 mice that are living in your house, uninvited. It would depend on your opinion of mice how you would describe that. Personally, I would say there are many mice in my house. Way too many, in fact. But is 3 a large number? No, it is not. It is a pretty small number, all things considered. What even is the definition of a "large number"? Over 50? Over 5000? We don't know. That is part of the reason that, again for the purposes of the LSAT, many is equivalent to some. It is an unknown number that is larger than 0. I am not 100% sure that, even on the LSAT, many can include 1. I feel like it wouldn't be used that way often, and would largely depend on context. I can definitely see that if we're discussing numbers like 1 out of 2, the LSAT might possibly use many. But since it is an ambiguous word, I think that it likely doesn't use it in that context frequently, if at all. They would be more likely to use "some" in that scenario.
A 'large' number is undefined. It's not meant to be a specific range. It's also subjective, to a point. So the mice example does not counter this definition of 'many'. If 'substantial' number is more acceptable as a definition, that's what it means.
PT1, Section 4, #21 is the problem I was referring to. It imo definitively proves that the LSAT does not consider "many" to include 1. In addition, the problem that OP was asking about - the lavender and stress problem in PT76 also definitively proves that the LSAT does not consider 'many' to include one. This is because if 'many' meant 'some', then one of the wrong answers would be necessary to the argument. We can only eliminate that wrong answer if 'many' does not include 1. Notice that there is no LSAT problem where the correct answer depends on interpreting 'many' as including 1. So I don't think the insistence that 'many' includes one is serving any purpose. PT1, Section 4, #21 proves that 'many' and 'some' have different meanings, since there are two answers that are indistinguishable except that one uses 'some' and the other uses 'many' and only one of those answers is correct.