All that is needed for B is A

stephaniexen

Hi,

I am practicing turning the kind of colloquial English sentences on the LSAT into strict logical statements. For example, take the following sentence:

All that is needed for the forces of evil to succeed is for enough good men to remain silent.

I would translate this logically as:

enough good men to remain silent --> forces of evil to succeed

I'm reading "All that is needed is" to signify that the predicate that follows will be a sufficient condition. Here are four more examples:

- The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- In order for ‘evil’ to prevail, all that need happen is for ‘good’ people to do nothing.
- The surest way for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
- All it takes for Evil to prevail in this world is for enough good men to do nothing.

I suspect that the predicate in each case defines a sufficient condition. What do you think?

Thanks,
Stephanie

Cant Get Right

Hey, great job Stephanie! And yeah, I think you pretty much nailed it. Group 5 indicators!

I haven't actually thought about this kind of construction and it took me a moment for it to register, so hopefully next time I see it, I'll recognize it more quickly.

I think there might be a little room for debate on "The surest way for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing," I'm honestly not even certain about that though. What is the nature of "surest?" In most of its forms, I would read "sure" as expressing a level of certainty which is absolutely sufficient for conditionality. But I'm not positive with the "est" version. Does that make it a matter of a degree of certainty? If it's a degree of certainty, then can it be strictly sufficient? Still not sure, but I think that may present an issue.

As for everything else, it is air tight. Totally outside of our indicators too, so good job on thinking critically and thanks for sharing.

Pacifico

I would say surest in this sense means best and therefore not necessarily the only.

lenelson2

Thanks for sharing!

Cant Get Right

Actually, now that I think about this not at 1am unable to sleep, I’m not so sure, lol.

So,

@stephaniexen said:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Good men doing nothing is “the only thing necessary.” Does that mean it’s sufficient? I don’t think we can say that. If evil has triumphed then we definitely know that good men have done nothing. But if good men do nothing, I don’t think this implies that the triumph of evil is necessitated. Maybe apathy reigns supreme?

Cant Get Right

Ok yeah, I think I got it now. So what makes this so weird is that normally there are nearly infinite NAs for any SA. So if I’m the greatest basketball player of all time —> what? We can conclude a near infinite number of necessaries. I can dribble a basketball. I could beat a toddler in a game of HORSE. Necessary assumptions are so weak we could generate an endless list of them. It goes on and on and on. So to say something is a lone necessary condition is to give it unprecedented power.

Our mistake is in equating the extraordinary power of sufficiency with that of being a lone, singular necessary condition. The necessary condition may become the more powerful condition here, but that does not change it’s fundamental logical nature.