PT63.S3.Q22 - a police officer is eligible

sweezyseason

Hey guys I'm having a hard time with this one
For anyone who is willing to try it out can you show me how you diagrammed it and came to choosing A over the others.
Thanks in advance!!
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-63-section-3-question-22/

Stevie C

There's no need to diagram. Also, I didn't watch JY's explanation so I don't know if this is redundant

Eligibility: You are eligible if (and only if!) you have a good record
Winning: If you exceeded reasonable expectations while saving a life, then you definitely win

A) Based on their records, Franklin is eligible and Penn is not. Franklin also triggers sufficient condition (saving life while exceeding expectations) and therefore should win.

Both are eligible, based on their records. Franklin should win since he triggers the sufficient. It's impossible to say what to do with Penn -- sure, he failed the sufficient, but there could be other ways of winning. The stimulus says that if you do A, then you win. It doesn't preclude other ways of winning.

C) Neither are even eligible to win. Don't read past first the sentence

D) We don't know enough to determine if anyone is eligible

E) It's not clear if Franklin should win. We know he saved lives. We know he exceeded expectations. But we don't know if he did both at the same time, which is the sufficient condition for winning the award.

DumbHollywoodActor

The difficulty in this question is that we have two conclusions: Franklin should receive commendation,and Penn should not.

Both answers (A) and (B) allow us to reason that Franklin should receive commendation, but how can we reason that Penn should not? We need to acknowledge a very justifiable yet implicit assumption that "one should receive commendation only if one is eligible". Hence, if one is not eligible, then one should NOT receive commendation.

Because (A) tells us that Penn doesn’t have an exemplary record, then Penn must not be eligible. Thus, Penn should not receive commendation.

For (B), because Penn has an exemplary record and, thus, is eligible for commendation, we can’t really infer that he shouldn’t receive commendation.

sweezyseason

Thanks so much! I was not interpreting the conditionals properly and as obvious as it sounds I totally missed the eligibility as necessary to win, and instead interpreted it as a sufficient condition along with the other one. Makes so much more sense now

Stevie C

@sweezyseason said:
Thanks so much! I was not interpreting the conditionals properly and as obvious as it sounds I totally missed the eligibility as necessary to win, and instead interpreted it as a sufficient condition along with the other one. Makes so much more sense now

Yeah it's a weird question, and it took me a lot of time during my PT.

exemplary record is both a sufficient and necessary condition because the stimulus says "Eligible if you have an exemplary record" (sufficiency) and "But not otherwise" (necessity) ..

I respectfully disagree with DumbHollywoodActor that this requires an assumption. It seems clear to me that "but not otherwise" explicitly means "Not exemplary record --> Not Eligible" . Then, with regard to the idea that a person can't win an award if he/she isn't eligible for it, I think that's inherent to the definition of the word eligibility.

DumbHollywoodActor

@"Stevie C" said:
I respectfully disagree with DumbHollywoodActor that this requires an assumption. It seems clear to me that "but not otherwise" explicitly means "Not exemplary record --> Not Eligible" . Then, with regard to the idea that a person can't win an award if he/she isn't eligible for it, I think that's inherent to the definition of the word eligibility.

Hey Stevie,

I thought you’re reasoning with the bi-conditional “but not otherwise” was sound; that’s why I didn’t add it to my analysis (I thought you covered it beautifully). The assumption I was referring to was the inherent definition, hence implicit assumption, that "if someone should win the commendation, then that someone is eligible.” I know of many students who totally got the bi-conditionalitly, but failed to recognize this idea and were paralyzed between A and B. My understanding of an assumption is that it’s a premise that is unstated. I’m not a hundred percent certain that the definition ‘eligibility’ for something would explicitly state that it’s a necessary condition for prescribing that one should receive something. Hence, I called it an assumption.

It’s all semantics, but, then again, so is much of the LSAT.

Stevie C

@DumbHollywoodActor said:
Hence, I called it an assumption.

Oh ok, I see what you mean.