How to translate an "All...and"statement?

1300253424

So here is the sentence:
All men and women are merely players.

I know it should translate as: men and women➡️ merely players.
And the contrapositive should be: /MP ➡️/men or /women.

But why it shouldn't be translated separately? In this sentence, "men and women" is not some kind of combination, I think they are separate conditions. You don't need to be men and women at the same time to be merely players. Just being men or women can activate the sufficient condition. I mean the "and"here, is actually an exclusive OR.
So I think it should diagram as: men or women ➡️ merely players.
And the contrapositive should be: /MP ➡️/men and /women.

If you find me made any silly mistake, please point it out. I am really confused right now. Thanks in advance!

If Glory then Guts

Your latter diagram is correct. It's M or W ---> MP. What do you mean you say you "know" it should translate as the former one? I think you might be getting confused by the 'ands' and the 'ors' in your first translation since it doesn't quite capture what's going on in the English statement as you picked up yourself. You've basically answered your own question, so take confidence in that!

Chris Nguyen

Hey!

Yes, you're 100% correct. I think this is a good place to point out that the English language is complicated, and you shouldn't always just look at logical indicators and keywords as 100% law. Instead, logical indicators should be used as one of the many tools to help you in your ultimate goal to understand what you're reading.

The way "and" is being used here is very different than how you've probably seen the word "and" used. The "and" here is separating two conditional statements. The "and" you're confusing it with separates two conditions within a conditional statement.

Let's look at this sentence in another perspective. You could translate this sentence to say this:

All men are merely players and all women are merely players.

Which as you're saying, basically splits it into two separate conditional statements.

The first way you're translating the sentence would look like this: If you're a man and a woman at the same time, then you are merely a player. Which is an entirely different meaning!

The key takeaway here is that logical indicators are not law, and to do well on the LSAT, we have to make sure we're using other tools, like your intuition and your regular understanding of the sentence to help you out.

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