p. 281, Q. 1 - Media Corrosive to Democracy

[lizk89]

Hey,

Wondering if answer choice A is otherwise correct were it not for the exaggerated language.
I ask because I'd like to know whether it is necessary that the conclusion, "relying on movies and electronic media for entertainment," is connected to the premise about civic participation or if it could just as well be connected to the premise about mutual trust and still be correct.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, Liz. It looks to me like we probably ought to link the conclusion to the premise about participation in civic organization, although we could possibly link instead to the first premise about mutual trust. It's a conditional argument:

Democratic Society = DS
Mutual Trust = MT
Participation in Civic Organizations = CO
Widespread Reliance on Movies and Electronic Media = RM

The stimulus gave us this relationship: DS -> MT -> CO
It then drew this conclusion: Not DS
It based this on the premise of RM.

So, in order to conclude Not DS the author must have assumed either RM -> Not CO or RM -> Not MT.

So, what's wrong with A, which is RM -> Not MT? I think you hit it - it's too extreme. If A was true, it would certainly strengthen the argument, but is it necessary for the conclusion, or could we have gotten away with less? If we try the negation technique, we might say "most people who rely on movies and electronic media for entertainment are still able to form strong bonds of mutual trust with a citizen". Does being able to form those bonds destroy the conclusion that movies are corrosive to democracy? No, because being able to form bonds doesn't mean you WILL form those bonds.

Check the explanation on pg. 283 - it does a good job of showing the effect of treating A as an assumption of the argument.

Hope that helped!

Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT Instructor

[lizk89]

Very much appreciate your response, Adam!

[leslie7]

Democratic Society = DS
Mutual Trust = MT
Participation in Civic Organizations = CO
Widespread Reliance on Movies and Electronic Media = RM

The stimulus gave us this relationship: DS -> MT -> CO
It then drew this conclusion: Not DS
It based this on the premise of RM.

So, in order to conclude Not DS the author must have assumed either RM -> Not CO or RM -> Not MT.

Hi Tyson, Sorry to ask you to reiterate this.

I see the connection DS -> SB - > PCO (ed. 2020, pg. 400)

I do understand the exaggerated claim now after reading the explanation but I'm trying to understand how we inserted "widespread reliance on movies has a corrosive effect on democracy"

Is this represented as RM->/DS

I'm a little confused in your explanation as to how our prephrased answer options are "either RM -> Not CO or RM -> Not MT."

Not sure if you're following me? I don't understand at all the above answer options.

Is it possible to show this in a long connected conditional? Maybe that visual would help? (or maybe that's not possible? )

[Adam Tyson]

Looking back at my earlier explanation in this thread, I can see why it might be a little confusing, leslie7. I'm going to modify my explanation a little bit here: the conclusion is the entire last sentence, the whole conditional claim that widespread reliance on movies etc. has a corrosive effect. What we should notice is that that claim about widespread reliance is new information, not mentioned elsewhere in the premises, and as such we must connect it back to the premises somehow. This leads us to a Supporter approach, where we link the new thing in the conclusion to something else in the premises.

The premises establish this conditional chain (and I will use words instead of abbreviations but I am still going to simplify the terms):

Democratic Society Mutual Trust Participation in Stuff

The conclusion is:

Widespread Reliance on Movies etc. Democratic Society

(that is a bit of an oversimplification - it's not really "no democratic society" but "hurts democratic society", but it's close enough for our purposes)

So how do we prove Democratic Society? Through the contrapositive of the original chain:

Participation in Stuff Mutual Trust Democratic Society

If we can get "Widespread Reliance on Movies etc." to be sufficient for either Participation in Stuff (the first term in the contrapositive chain) or else make it sufficient for Mutual Trust (the second term in that chain), we will have what we need to connect it all the way to the last thing in the chain, Democratic Society.

The problem with answer A is that instead of dealing with Widespread Reliance, it deals with something different, which is anyone having that kind of reliance. That's not the same as such reliance being widespread, and so does not trigger the conditional chain.

I hope that clears it up, sorry for any confusion! And for anyone else reading this, the original page numbers referred to an older version of the LR Bible. Since the book has grown substantially, the page numbers are off, but it's still the first question in the Assumption Questions problem set at the end of Chapter 11.