Lesson 5, Statement Negation Drill, Question #4

[lathlee]

4. Happiness is impossible unless we profess a commitment to freedom.
but happiness is impossible is the sufficient and unless we profess a comitment to freedom.

but the correct answer accoding to the answer sheet: even if we do not profess a cmoitment, happines may still be possible.

I don't understand why happiness may still be possible is one negated since it is the sufficient condition.

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi lathlee,

Here, you can diagram number 4 like this:
happiness profess commitment to freedom
So the logical opposite of that is that you could have happiness even if you don't profess a commitment to freedom; you don't necessarily need the professing to get to happiness.
Remember that with the assumption negation technique, we want to make sure to end up with the logical opposite; you need to pay attention to meaning, and not just applying the formula you have memorized. If you think about this one without separating it from its meaning, hopefully you'll be able to see it!

[lathlee]

Sorry for the late reply, but as Dave once said, Even if is a sufficient condition indicator. not necessary condition indicator. so what is the necessary condition here

[lathlee]

Sorry for the late reply, but as Dave once said, Even if is a sufficient condition indicator. not necessary condition indicator. so what is the necessary condition here

So the logical opposite of that is that you could have happiness even if you don't profess a commitment to freedom; you don't necessarily need the professing to get to happiness.

Then according to what dave said,

-- proess a comitment to freedom you could have happiness

[Adam Tyson]

I'm not sure that's quite what Dave said about "even if", lathlee. We use "even if" to show that conditional relationship might NOT exist, as in "the sufficient condition can happen EVEN IF the necessary condition does not" (meaning it isn't really necessary) or "even if the sufficient condition happens, the necessary condition might not" (again, meaning it isn't really necessary). That's not a way to show a conditional relationship, but a way to NEGATE a conditional relationship, which you might want to do when analyzing certain assumption answer choices.

What he is saying in the language you quoted is that happiness is NOT sufficient for professing a commitment to freedom. That isn't a conditional claim, but a denial of a conditional claim.

In short, you can use "even if" in certain ways to negate conditional claims, but "even if" is not a conditional indicator by itself.

[Blueballoon5%]

Hi Emily! I understood your explanation well (thank you!). I was wondering if we could skip the step of turning the original conditional statement into its contrapositive.

In other words, you explained this process:
Step One: Change sentence to conditional phrase
"happiness profess commitment to freedom"
Step Two: Turn this into its contrapositive
"~profess commitment to freedom ~happiness"
Step Three: Negate this conditional statement to get its logical opposite
"~profess commitment to freedom happiness"
Step Four: Translate conditional statement back to a sentence format.
Correct answer (on page 5-112): "Even if we do not profess a commitment to freedom,
happiness may still be possible."

I was wondering if we can skip step two. So instead, could I do this:
Step One: Change sentence to conditional phrase
"happiness profess commitment to freedom"
Step Two: Negate this conditional statement to get its logical opposite
"happiness ~profess commitment to freedom"
Step Three: Translate conditional statement back to a sentence format.
Such as, "If happiness is possible, we don't necessarily have to profess a
commitment to freedom."

What is the difference between the two, and why is the first process more correct than mine?

Hope you can help!

[lathlee]

Blueballon, bro, hope this article can help. I used to have excactly have exact same question you just posted. https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/how-to ... snt-matter

basically even if is an indicator that enables that the sufficient condition can still happen regardless of the term that is assisted by the term, Even if, occurs or not occurs.

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Blueballoon,

I actually wouldn't advocate taking all the steps you outlined. My original answer was saying once you've diagrammed the conditional statement you essentially have "If A, then B." To use the assumption negation technique, you'd change that to, "You can have A even if B doesn't necessarily happen." Applying that to this question, we have:
happiness profess commitment to freedom

So, the negation is:
You can have happiness even if you don't necessarily profess a commitment to freedom.

Trying to diagram it out in either of the ways you proposed (the one you thought I did, or the one you did) is problematic because the logical opposite of A B isn't A B (which would be if A, then not B).

Does that make sense?