Necessary Assumption questions

Comments

• joegotbored-1 Alum Member

  September 2014 802 karma

  Hi @Tanes,
  
  I posted something about SA questions yesterday and included an NA example for differentiation. Don't know if it'll help, but if you understand SA, at least somewhat, then this might help you think about NA differently.
  
  http://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/1295/sufficient-assumption-questions
  
  Good luck! Maybe someone else has some good ideas? @Gracelover? @JasonAD?
• tanes256 Alum Member

  September 2014 2573 karma

  Thanks @joegotbored-1! I read over your example several times and each time I could see how they were right but I'm still not really seeing/understanding the difference between the two. I see them in your example but I still can't really apply this to the LSAT questions. I'm reading the SA and NA section in the Manhattan LR book as well. Maybe it'll click in soon. I'm sure it will. It has to! LOL Should I move on and just keep revisiting, or just stick with it until I get it? I'm going to keep looking for more examples. Maybe the more easy examples I see the easier it'll get for me. Again, thank you!
• 11 Likes

  Gracelover Alum Member

  September 2014 440 karma

  Hey tanes25! A lot of NA arguments contain the following error: assuming that two ideas connect just because they may sound similar. So, for example, a typical argument might go like this: "She hates the food I cook. Obviously, therefore, she does not find my food delicious." The assumed connection here is: hating my food and not finding my food delicious. Could it be that there are other reasons "she" hates my food? Sure! She might in fact think my food is delicious, but hate it anyway because it's too fattening/unhealthy...So a correct NA answer is one that talks about the assumed connection: "If one hates a meal someone cooked, then one does not find it to be delicious." These are the kind of assumptions JY labels as "bridge" assumptions.
  
  But harder NA questions are a lot more subtle: in other words, the assumption is not explicitly stated in the argument, but it's still there. For example: "The store owner sold me a brand-named t-shirt for 50 dollars, but later I found out that the t-shirt was actually knock-off that was in fact worth 2 dollars. Thus, the store owner conned me, and is a con person." The assumption here is what the store owner's intentions were: often, whenever intentionality is attributed to someone on the LSAT, it's usually an error and an assumption. A correct NA answer might look like this: "The store owner knew the brand-named t-shirt was in fact a knock-off and intentionally kept this a secret from the customer." These are known as defender assumption types, which are a lot harder.
  
  Could it be that the store owner did not know that the t-shirt he/she sold was in fact a knock-off? Perhaps the supplier/manufacturer ripped the store owner off. You have to be careful with verbs like "swindle, lie, cheat, fraud, con, etc..." because they cover conduct which is INTENTIONAL, and you are not given anything in the passage which can lead you to think that the store owner intended to fraud you.
• DByrne07 Core Member

  October 2014 279 karma

  Gracelover - great post!