[Webinar] RC Mini Course in Three Sessions

J.Y. Ping

Hey 7Sagers,

I'm teaching a live RC webinar mini course! Seriously, it's going to be me but live.

What is it?
We'll start with RC theory and fundamentals and then we'll apply it to select RC passages. Some materials in this webinar will overlap with what's in the Core Curriculum but most will be new. We're only using pre PT 36 materials. You don't need to have anything printed out, just follow along on screen or you can access the content via the Question Bank.

Who's it for?
I'll be picking a very very small group so everyone can interact. I will be asking lots of questions and will cold call just like in law school! Terrifyingly fun! Priority will be given to enrolled 7Sagers. You should have completed the Intro to Arguments, Grammar, and Main Point/Conclusion classes. No other background in RC necessary. If you're already advanced in RC, eh, this is probably not for you.

When?
Session 1: Monday, April 4
Session 2: Wednesday, April 6
Session 3: Friday, April 8
All sessions 8pm - 9:30pm (Eastern Time)

You have to commit to attending all three sessions. This is a long term relationship.

How do I sign up?
Step 1: Fill out this Google Survey before Sunday night 11:59pm.
Step 2: We'll do selections and email you next week.
Step 3: If selected, we'll ask you to place a small deposit to incentivize your attending all three sessions. If you do attend all three sessions in their entirety, we will refund you 100%. If you don't attend, you will not get your deposit back. Instead, we will donate your deposit to the political organization that you hate the most.

Cant Get Right

@"J.Y. Ping" said:
If you don't attend, you will not get your deposit back. Instead, we will donate your deposit to the political organization that you hate the most.

Please do this.

Addistotle

Fingers crossed, this will be extremely helpful!

tanes256

Love how 7 Sage has evolved!!

jimenezja.jj

how much is the webinar?

Not Ralph Nader

Hopefully I will be among the chosen ones !!

MrSamIam

Second to last question...well done, J.Y...well done...

J.Y. Ping

Hey @jimenezja.jj the mini course is free as long as you commit to doing it. It only costs you money if you are selected, agree to do it, then flake on us.

Cant Get Right

Man, I’ve been listening to 90’s music all day and I just can’t get enough.

The Aviator

That MBT question is one of the hardest..

cacrv567

UGHHHH I CAN'T DO MONDAY. please have more of these!!

cacrv567

can someone DM me the answer to that MBT though so I can confirm I'm right?

Darth Jurist

This sounds amazing! RC is becoming my favorite section.

Martin01

I really need help in RC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

mtf612

Now I'm thinking I put the wrong answer for the MBT question. I'm getting GoogleForms Test anxiety.

J.Y. Ping

Update
We're closing signups on Sunday night at 11:59pm.
We'll email everyone selection results by Tuesday morning.

time_to_go

Do we need a headset microphone for this? I think built-in mic can echo for some people.

J.Y. Ping

Yeah, probably best to have headphones with a mic out of consideration for everyone. I think most(?) come with a mic... not sure. I'm pretty sure the standard Apple ones that come in the box for iPhones include a built in mic.

I checked on Amazon just now and you can get excellent ones for $11. But probably should wait till we announce the selection unless you need one for something else.

toughchoice

Anyway you guys could archive this so we can look at it on-demand ?

J.Y. Ping

@toughchoice yes, like all our other webinars, you'll be able to access this one too once the it's done.

J.Y. Ping

Hey everyone, thanks for signing up! We received so many more signups than I anticipated.

Since I want this course to be interactive, I am only selecting four 7Sagers. This is an unfortunately small number. If you did not get an email from me, it means that you were not selected and I'm sorry about this. But, we will be making this webinar available online once it's done.

J.Y. Ping

Also, check this out:

Cant Get Right

Just remember what Mark Twain said: "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform."

twssmith

Congratulations to JY's "Final Four" - all the best and can't wait to learn from you through your experience:)

time_to_go

So if C is wrong, is it because one has falsely equated Chilean panthers that hunt at night = Nocturnal predators? Can someone explain the wrong answers please?

The 180 Bro_OVO

@"Purple Paris" said:
So if C is wrong, is it because one has falsely equated Chilean panthers that hunt at night = Nocturnal predators? Can someone explain the wrong answers please?

The 3rd one is wrong.

The argument tells us that some nocturnal predators are stealthy.
We cannot say for sure if some of those predators are spotted Chilean panthers.
It does not HAVE to be true. So, it fails the standard of MBT.

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Cant Get Right

Yeah that’s what I got @"The 180 Bro_OVO" . There are just no overlapping terms to link the premises together. Broken down into logic, it basically says:

No A are B
Some X are Y
Therefore: ?

Of course, it’s easy to see once it’s reduced to logic, but it’s such a grammatical mess it’s really difficult to translate; and that’s exactly what makes it so challenging.

time_to_go

Thank you for responding guys! So how you solved the problem is:

CPHN --->/USS (If no spotted Chilean panthers that hunt at night use only their sense of smell)
NP <--s--> St (Some nocturnal predators are stealthy)
---------------------------------------
No non-trivial valid conclusion can be made


That was actually how I initially solved the problem, but I changed my mind (even though I had a feeling I was making a false overlap) and re-diagrammed it to

St <--s--> (NP) CPHN --->/USS

and chose (c) despite what (d) said: No "non-trivial" valid conclusion can be made.

Funny thing is I just remembered what he even meant by "non-trivial" inferences. Ha.. I seriously gotta read more attentively and review some materials. It was a really good question to learn my weakness.

jessicalj

Agree with @"Purple Paris"'s excellent Lawgic:

CPHN -> /USS
Some NP are St

Based on the description of hunting at night, one can deduce that CPHN is a subset of NP. Equivocating the two would be incorrect, which is why some CPHN are St is inaccurate. However, we can still infer that some NP (CPHN) use more than their sense of smell (/USS).

Grey Warden

I applied the same logic as @jessicalj, what is the correct answer? Is it D? Btw, loved this question.

Cant Get Right

Actually, if we can classify the Panthers as nocturnal predators via the “that hunt at night” clause, I guess A would be right.

Cant Get Right

Although, I might argue that there is more to the concept of “nocturnalness” than engaging in an activity at night. Humans are diurnal, but this doesn’t preclude us from doing things at night.

Cant Get Right

https://youtu.be/VsoQ3RPI9O0

Martin01

DARN!!! Please let us know once the webinars are available for the members. I really need help with RC. Thank you.

mtf612

Sigh. Sad times. RC is my weakest section. I should have picked a better 90s pop band! Smash mouth?
Looking forward to the online post

twssmith

Guess I offended them when I said I was not a member of NSynch's fan club:(

Cant Get Right

@twssmith said:
Guess I offended them when I said I was not a member of NSynch's fan club:(

Well, yeah you did. *NSync is the greatest.

Grey Warden

@"Cant Get Right" yeah I was thinking about the exact same thing as to how to interpret nocturnal predators

Cant Get Right

@"Grey Warden" I think there’s definitely some philosophical debate possible there. Maybe not with "predator,” but definitely with “nocturnal.” I mean, what does that even mean man?

Alejandro

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nocturnal

Cant Get Right

So, "active mainly during the night" eh?

quinnxzhang

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Actually, if we can classify the Panthers as nocturnal predators via the “that hunt at night” clause, I guess A would be right.

Even if we could classify panthers as nocturnal, (A) would still not be right.

The first proposition about the panthers is a negative existential claim, or, equivalently, a universal claim. Negative existentials/universals can be vacuously true if nothing satisfies the antecedent condition. So in this case, the first proposition is entirely consistent with there being no Chilean panthers at all in the world.

Imagine a world where the only nocturnal predators are house cats, and house cats only hunt with their sense of smell. Both propositions in the stimulus would be true, but (A) would be false.

(B) isn't correct because both propositions are true in a world where only house cats hunt nocturnally and where house cats use more than their sense of smell and where house cats are stealthy, and, lastly, where everything else in this world that uses only its sense of smell is not stealthy.

(C) isn't correct because both propositions are true in a world where no Chilean panthers exist.

Cant Get Right

I’m really glad LSAT doesn’t go into existential fallacies!

Here’s my latest translation:

Spotted Chilean Panther that hunts at night --> Use Only Sense of Smell
Nocturnal Predators -some--> Stealthy.

If we can say (and we have to really bend over backwards not to):

Spotted Chilean Panthers -some--> Nocturnal Predators

Then we can say:

Nocturnal Predators -some--> Only Sense of Smell

Existential fallacy aside, that’s a valid argument structure.

quinnxzhang

Quantified sentences can be problematic for "lawgic" translations, and this one is a perfect example.

Here is the abridged first-order logic translation of the first proposition:

¬∃x(SpottedChileanPantherThatHuntsAtNight(x) ∧ UsesOnlySenseOfSmell(x))

This is equivalent to

∀x(SpottedChileanPantherThatHuntsAtNight(x) → ¬UsesOnlySenseOfSmell(x))

Inferring from this the following sentence:

∃x(SpottedChileanPantherThatHuntsAtNight(x) ∧ ¬UsesOnlySenseOfSmell(x))

is a textbook fallacy covered in every first-order logic course. From a universal, we simply can't infer an existential. From "no spotted Chilean panthers blah blah blah", we simply cannot validly infer that there are any spotted Chilean panthers at all. And there are some very good reasons why we can't make this inference.

Cant Get Right

It’s been a decade since I took formal logic, lol. Anyone else want to jump in?

quinnxzhang

@"Cant Get Right", I didn't intend my comments to harp on you or anything like that. And I don't think anything terribly important turns on this, since I've yet to see an LSAT question exploit this fallacy. However, in the interest of correctness, I thought I'd bring it up.

Cant Get Right

It’s all good @quinnxzhang I didn’t take it like that at all. I know you’re right, I actually answered no valid inferences as well.

I just got into a lot of trouble before 7Sage by not shifting my thinking from formal logic to LSAT logic. So in my earlier prep, I would use the horseshoe to indicate a conditional statement and all the “there exists an x such that,” proper logical language, that kind of thing. When I started 7Sage I told myself I was going to abandon all that and exclusively use the methods and notations of 7Sage, and for the purposes of the LSAT it’s been a lot more effective.

So I guess my interest in this is that I can’t recall an existential fallacy lesson. “No” is simply a group 4 indicator- negate necessary and done, no existential strings attached. I think at some point JY says something about a unicorn, the classic example of this existential fallacy, so I’m wondering if maybe we do get this somewhere, but I just can’t find the lesson.

So it’s like I’m experiencing some kind of self aware cognitive dissonance or something. Hard, formal Aristotelian/Boolean logic seems to be crashing into LSAT logic and I just don’t know what to do with that. Right now, I only care about LSAT logic, so I just want to make sure that’s the understanding I’m arriving at.

jessicalj

Could @"J.Y. Ping" or another Sage chime in on the issues raised by @quinnxzhang and @"Cant Get Right"? Which interpretation is consistent with LSAT logic?

quinnxzhang

@"Cant Get Right" said:
I think at some point JY says something about a unicorn, the classic example of this existential fallacy, so I’m wondering if maybe we do get this somewhere, but I just can’t find the lesson.

Ah, yeah, unicorns are often used to illustrate this point. "All unicorns have one horn" is vacuously true because there are no unicorns. "Some unicorns have one horn" is false because "some" requires that there be at least one unicorn, which there isn't.

@jessicalj LSAT logic operates from classical assumptions (non-contradiction, excluded middle, double negation elimination, etc.), so my comments are entirely consistent with LSAT logic. I would just be very, very surprised if something like this showed up on the LSAT because I've never seen a test question abuse vacuous truths.

Cant Get Right

Yeah @jessicalj I asked Sage Corey about it and he confirmed everything @quinnxzhang was saying. I think what threw me off is I just can’t find the lesson that deals with it. I think LSAT just really doesn’t want to go there and they just avoid it altogether.

Cant Get Right

@quinnxzhang said:
"Some unicorns have one horn" is false because "some" requires that there be at least one unicorn, which there isn't.

Or is there… I believe.