LSAT 119 – Section 2 – Question 23

LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 23

June 2005

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT119 S2 Q23
+LR
Sufficient assumption +SA
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
11%
160
B
7%
157
C
4%
156
D
64%
166
E
15%
160
149
158
168
 +Harder 144.676 +SubsectionEasier

J.Y.’s explanation

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The question stem reads: The Conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed? This is a Sufficient Assumption question.

Love is complicated in the real world, which is no different than love in the LSAT. It's possible to love someone and not be loved back. Unfortunately, love is not a biconditional. My previous relationships confirm that. While reading this stimulus, it is essential to see which "way" the love is going. Are you loving or being loved? The stimulus is short and conditional heavy, so let's break these down as we go. The stimulus starts with "whoever is kind is loved by somebody or another." This translates into the lawgic:

kind -> loved by someone

Next, the stimulus claims that "whoever loves anyone is happy." This translated into the lawgic:

Love anyone -> happy

The argument concludes, "Whoever is kind is happy." Translated:

Kind -> happy

Let's organize this argument into:

P1: Kind -> loved by someone

P2: Love anyone -> happy

______________________________________________

C: Kind -> happy

We can kick up the sufficient condition so we now have:

P3: Kind

P1: Kind -> loved by someone

P2: Love anyone -> happy

______________________________________________

C: Happy

We want to get to "happy," and P2 will get us there if we can satisfy "love anyone." Let's make that our necessary condition: (__) -> love anyone. Now we need to find a sufficient condition that will be satisfied by the argument. Notice how P3 satisfies the sufficient condition of P1, so we can infer that "loved by someone" occurs. Let's make "loved by someone" the sufficient condition of conditional: loved by someone -> love anyone. Now we have a valid argument:

P3: Kind

P1: Kind -> loved by someone

SA: Loved by someone -> love anyone

P2: Love anyone -> happy

______________________________________________

C: Happy

P3 will trigger P1, P1 triggers our SA, and our SA will trigger P2, which brings us to the desired conclusion of "happy." Happy is exactly what we are because we just solved this four-star problem. Let's move to the answer choices.

Answer Choice (A) is incorrect. If you picked (A), you likely misread P1 and thought that being kind meant you loved someone. You can rule out (A) quickly by seeing we are missing the concept of "loved by."

Answer Choice (B) is also out. You can rule out (B) because we are missing the concept of "loved by."

Answer Choice (C) is also out. We want to get to "happy," but (C) has "happy" in sufficient condition; we can rule (C) out.

Correct Answer Choice (D) is the contrapositive of our prephase. (D) translate to:

Loves no one -> loved by no one

We take the contrapositive:

/(loved by no one) -> /(loves no one)

Not being loved by no one means you are loved by someone. Not loving no one means you love someone. So we get our SA: "Loved by someone -> love anyone."

Answer Choice (E) is the most popular wrong answer. If you picked (E), you likely thought that (E) would let you infer "loves everyone." "Loves everyone" would satisfy "loves anyone" and deliver you to "happy." The problem with (E) is that it has "Kind" in the necessary. Remember, satisfying the necessary condition has no effect on the sufficient condition.

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LSAT PrepTest 119 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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