How to diagram "is"/"usually"

afios134

How do you diagram "is"/"usually" statements? For example, PT 54 Section 4 Q 22.

"The morally preferable act is usually the one that serves the long term interest. Because of this, businesses often have compelling reasons to execute the morally preferable act."

I halt on these SUfficient assumption questiins because they are not readily diagrammable...

Another one is diagramming causal statements:

"Most friendships begin because someone felt comfortable approaching a stranger"

Q.E.D

You can't tell out of context, but there are three ways it could go with those words. It's a quantifier, it's a modal operator or it jess don't matter.

Here's one where it's a quantifier.

"The UPS man usually comes on Thursday. It's usually Todd, the guy with the weird haircut. Therefore, there are at least some times when a UPS guy with a weird haircut comes on Thursday." VALID

Here's one where it's modal.

"Usually Tom thinks Bill is rude. Bill is Jessica's uncle. Therefore, Tom usually thinks Jessica's uncle is rude." INVALID

And here's one where the word "usually" is logically inert.

"Bill is usually late to work. Anyone who's usually late to work is a bad employee and should be fired. Therefore, Bill should be fired." VALID

So "usually" doesn't usually mean anything. How you schematize will depend on the structure of the argument. If it's a quantifier, treat it as most (times). The LSAT doesn't test for modal fallacies that I've noticed, so don't sweat that. And be aware that sometimes the argument will have words that don't play an important formal role.

Good luck

Edit- It does test for fallacies where modal conclusions (e.g. "X should Y") seem to follow from non-modal premises. You can understand these in non-logical terms, though (e.g. no evaluative from non-evaluative), so still don't be troubled by modal structure.

DEC_LSAT

@afios134 i think usually is diagrammed as "most" . i recently had a question that used usually in a parallel method of reasoning ques