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legallyconfused
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This is a pretty common and confusing issue! The problem is that the sentence you're trying to diagram is not grammatically precise (and arguably not grammatically correct). Your understanding of the sentence is accurate. The LSAT would write this sentence by placing "only" closer to the idea to which it applies in order to avoid the very confusion that you're experiencing. This is the accurate way to write the sentence:
"Flowers can make you happy ONLY BY triggering your happy brain chemicals."
This issue comes up frequently on examples that are not from real LSATs, because most people can understand the intended meaning of an improperly placed "only", and so we don't necessarily need to place "only" correctly in order to get by in the world. For example:
"You can only vote in a federal election if you're a citizen of the United States."
Most people would understand that this sentence is trying to describe one requirement that you must meet in order to vote - you must be a citizen. But someone who applies the LSAT rule of "If = sufficient condition" would be confused and think...doesn't "if" introduce "being a citizen"...so wouldn't this be "If citizen.... then you can only vote"...? Huh? Is this saying that if you're a citizen, the only thing you can do is vote? What??
No, that's not what the sentence means!
What's happening is that the sentence is not grammatically precise (and again, arguably not grammatically correct). The LSAT would write the sentence in this way:
"You can vote in a federal election ONLY IF you're a citizen of the United States."
Notice that in a grammatically precise sentence, the words "only" and "if" will not be split from each other if the intended meaning is the phrase "only if".
The moral of the story is, be careful when reading material that's not as precise as the LSAT almost always is.
@KevinLuminateLSAT... Mind blown.. really awesome explanation of this - I find these examples super fascinating.
It seems that this happens because we split up the components of "only if" across the sentence; similar to how we can sometimes drop "however", into the middle of a sentence without any loss in meaning but in a way that makes mechanical rules start to malfunction.
I built out some additional examples for ONLY WHEN and ONLY WHERE. It seems like those are the only cases where this might come up, any others you can think of?
You can ONLY go to the party WHEN you've finished your chores; (ONLY WHEN you finish your chores can you go to the party); P -> F.
Farmer Joe can ONLY grow mushrooms WHERE the pigs on his farm won't eat them; Farmer Joe can grow mushrooms ONLY WHERE the pigs on his farm won't eat them (G.M.->/P.E.)
A strategy that I like to use during confusing conditionals, is take a step back from the indicators and think to myself: "okay, what are the ideas being connected, which one is necessary for the other, and how can I rephrase it so it makes sense to me?"
So in the example you provided, the two ideas are: flowers making people happy (FH) and flowers triggering happy brain chemicals (FTC). Rephrasing: So if a flower makes me happy, it is because they triggered my happy brain chemicals. (the conditional should form more clearly in your mind as you break the sentence down to be simpler) And finally, to diagram, it would look something like this: "FH --> FTC"
This matches the description that @KevinLuminateLSAT posted above! (which was a great explanation) "Flowers can make you happy ONLY BY triggering your happy brain chemicals." (FH --> FTC)
I definitely agree that the LSAT is clearer about structuring the sentences, but even in the curvebreaker conditional Qs, taking a step back to quickly rephrase has helped me when I feel overwhelmed!
@KevinLuminateLSAT @ahnendc-1 @"Jahn.Snow97"
PHEW! Thank you so much everyone! This has helped me so much. I really appreciate it. I thought that I understood what the sentence was trying to say, but I was still uncertain because of how the logical indicators were placed in the sentence. I understand now! Thank you again!
Excellent examples! There are other instances of a split between "only" and the phrase to which it applies: "You can ONLY eat dessert AFTER you've finished dinner." (You can eat dessert ONLY AFTER you've finished dinner.)
By the way, notice that another way to correct the imprecise sentence is to use the phrase "the only": "THE ONLY TIME you can eat dessert is AFTER you've finished dinner."
Of course! To piggyback of what @"Jahn.Snow97" was saying is I like to ask myself, "what implies what?
If I had to bet, @legallyconfused, you probably have a really good intuitive understanding of what the conditionals mean but it's the formalizing them into a sufficiency/necessity relationship that is more difficult; at least this was the case for me.
Anyways, try to come up with your own sort of 'test' (again, for me it's "what is implying what"); maybe for you it makes sense to do a "what is required for what" or "if something then the other thing" but I'd chose one and stay with it so under timed conditions you know EXACTLY what to fall back on immediately if you ever get stuck.