PT55.S3.Q24 - it is popularly believed that

extramediumextramedium Alum Member
edited April 2017 in Logical Reasoning 419 karma

Can someone please confirm that I have this chain correct? I became confused with the "cannot" in the first premise. Now I'm presuming "cannot" is modifying the sufficient clause since this premise includes "unless." Please correct me if I'm wrong. I was initially under the impression that cannot was modifying the necessary clause since it is a group 4 indicator.

AV (Aesthetic Value)
WM (Whatever Meaning Reader Assigns)
OE (Objectively Evaluated)

Premise:
AV--->~WM

I was very unclear on the wording in the necessary clause. After looking at this for a while, I determined that at least two readers agreeing on the "correct" interpretation appears to be the logical opposite of a poem having whatever meaning a reader assigns. Still a bit shaky on this though.

Conclusion:
EO--->~WM

Answer Choice D
EO--->AV

Chain:
EO--->AV--->~WM
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-55-section-3-question-24/

Comments

  • extramediumextramedium Alum Member
    419 karma

    @DumbHollywoodActor Can you give me a Y or N on this? I was confused again after the session, so I spent a couple hours on this.

  • DumbHollywoodActorDumbHollywoodActor Alum Inactive ⭐
    edited April 2017 7468 karma

    Yep that's right. Though the true difficulty of this question, like we discussed during our session and like you said, was recognizing that /WM (Whatever Meaning Reader Assigns is false) is logically consistent with RA (Reader agreement). That's really difficult to see because it requires more assumptions (like that the meanings that each reader could assign would never be the same because if they were, we'd have agreement, wouldn't we? What I think LSAC would say is that if there exists a correct interpretation of the poem, then it can't be the case that EVERY reader can assign whatever meaning they want to the poem. Someone would have to offer an incorrect interpretation) . I think the contrapositives make it a little easier to see:

    No reader agreement ---> No Aesthetic value discussed

    Each (or every) reader assigns whatever meaning it wants (thereby no reader agreement) ----> No objective evaluation possible

    So, the NA bridge is that if no aesthetic value can be discussed ---> No objective evaluation is possible. Answer D is the contrapositive of this statement.

  • extramediumextramedium Alum Member
    419 karma

    If I'm not mistaken, this seems to have the same conditional format as a sufficient assumption question and answer. Would that be safe to say? (A->B, therefore X->B. right AC is X->A)

    Thanks again @DumbHollywoodActor Think that clears it up for the most part.

  • DumbHollywoodActorDumbHollywoodActor Alum Inactive ⭐
    7468 karma

    Yes, bridging NAs look VERY similar to SAs because they both cover gaps (or assumptions). This is why I was saying in our session that NA bridging is very common when there is ONLY one premise to the conclusion; a natural gap normally exists between a single premise and the conclusion. But I want to be very clear about something: it didn't have to look like a sufficient assumption. A necessary assumption to this argument could have also been something like this: "There exists a relationship between discussing aesthetic value of poetry and objectively evaluating poetry." In other words, ANY statement that connects those two ideas is a necessary assumption. But LSAC knows that students use simplified heuristics like "SAs are strong, NAs are weak." As you can see from this example, that heuristic doesn't work in this case. The only way to know for sure an assumption is necessary is to employ the Negation test.

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