#24 - All unemployed artists are sympathetic to social

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True—SN. The correct answer choice is (A)

This short stimulus contains two facts that we can combine together to gain an additive inference. The first fact is that if you are an unemployed artist, then you are sympathetic to social justice. To avoid the double negative that would result from negating “unemployed,” we will use the term “employed artist,” but negate it:

• Sufficient Necessary
  
  employed artist sympathetic to social justice

Next, we are told that if you are an employed artist, then you are not interested in the prospect of great personal fame:

• Employed artist interested in great personal fame

We can combine these terms by means of a contrapositive. So, if we take the contrapositive of the first rule,

• Sympathetic to social justice employed artist

and combine it with the second rule across the common term of “employed artist,” we can get the additive inference that if you are not sympathetic to social justice, then you are not interested in the prospect of great personal fame:

• Sympathetic to social justice employed artist interested in great personal fame

and the contrapositive of that inference:

• interested in great personal fame employed artist sympathetic to social justice

This is a Must Be True question. Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will test us on the inference diagrammed above.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice, because it properly describes the contrapositive to the additive inference described above:

• interested in great personal fame sympathetic to social justice.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice improperly treats being uninterested in great personal fame (interested in great personal fame) as a sufficient condition, when that term was only ever used as a necessary condition.

Answer choice (C): Here, the answer choice gives the Mistaken Negation of the second rule.

Answer choice (D): In this case, the answer choice is the Mistaken Reversal of the first rule.

Answer choice (E): This answer choice is incorrect because the second rule told us that employed artists are not interested in the prospect of great personal fame. In order for this answer choice to be correct, the second fact must have said that employed artists are interested in great personal fame.

[oli_oops]

Hello,

This explanation is really helpful. But how is this a conditional reasoning instead of formal logic question?

Thank you!
oli

[Brook Miscoski]

oli,

Conditional reasoning is part of formal logic.

[lsatstudent99966]

I have an issue with this question even though I got it right.

For (A) to be the correct answer, we need to form the contrapositive of the second sentence as: "Interested in the prospect of personal fame unemployed artist."

But does "NOT employed artist" really mean the same as "unemployed artist"?

Isn't it possible that neither "employed artist" nor "unemployed artist" is interested in personal fame? We know that if someone is interested in the prospect of personal fame, then they are definitely not employed artists—but does that necessarily mean they must be unemployed artists? Maybe no artists, employed or not, are interested in personal fame. We simply don’t know.

This feels like saying: "Retired history teacher not interested in math questions."

Then forming the contrapositive as: "Interested in math questions history teachers that haven’t retired yet."

But that doesn’t make sense. I think the only conclusion we can draw is: "Interested in math questions NOT retired history teachers."

Thank you in advance!

[lsatstudent99966]

I have an issue with this question even though I got it right.

For (A) to be the correct answer, we need to form the contrapositive of the second sentence as: "Interested in the prospect of personal fame unemployed artist."

But does "NOT employed artist" really mean the same as "unemployed artist"?

Isn't it possible that neither "employed artist" nor "unemployed artist" is interested in personal fame? We know that if someone is interested in the prospect of personal fame, then they are definitely not employed artists—but does that necessarily mean they must be unemployed artists? Maybe no artists, employed or not, are interested in personal fame. We simply don’t know.

This feels like saying: "Retired history teacher not interested in math questions."

Then forming the contrapositive as: "Interested in math questions history teachers that haven’t retired yet."

But that doesn’t make sense. I think the only conclusion we can draw is: "Interested in math questions NOT retired history teachers."

Thank you in advance!

Sorry sorry, I wasn't thinking clearly when I posted this question...

I just realized that there could be 0 artists interested in personal fame even if we say: "Interested in the prospect of personal fame unemployed artist."

[Jeff Wren]

Hi lsatstudent,

You're right that "Not employed artist" is not identical in meaning to "unemployed artist." While all "unemployed artists" would fall into the category of "people who are not employed artists," this second group also includes all non-artists (whether they are employed or not).

If you really want to get in the weeds, you could split up the diagram for "Not employed artist" as:

"Not employed" or "Not an artist" (or both).

Then the contrapositive of the second conditional statement in the stimulus would be:

If one is interested in the prospect of great personal fame, then one is either "Not employed" or "Not an artist" (or both).

Now Answer A mentions "Artists" as part of the sufficient condition, so Answer A can more precisely be diagrammed:

If "Artists" and "Interested in the prospect of great personal fame," then they are "sympathetic to social justice."

Since the sufficient here indicates that we are talking about Artists, this rules out the "Not an artist" possibility of "not employed artist" term, leaving only "Not employed." Since we now have both "Artists" and "Not employed," together those do mean "unemployed artists," which let's us then link to the final term of the conditional chain (sympathetic to social justice) by using the first conditional statement.

Hopefully, this explanation is helpful rather than confusing.

To be clear, that's probably more complicated than is necessary to solve the question, and I wouldn't recommend going through all that if doing this question in the middle of a timed test. If you simply diagram "unemployed artist" and "not employed artist" the same way, it ends up getting to the correct answer with less hassle, even though the terms aren't actually identical.

[lsatstudent99966]

Hi lsatstudent,

You're right that "Not employed artist" is not identical in meaning to "unemployed artist." While all "unemployed artists" would fall into the category of "people who are not employed artists," this second group also includes all non-artists (whether they are employed or not).

If you really want to get in the weeds, you could split up the diagram for "Not employed artist" as:

"Not employed" or "Not an artist" (or both).

Then the contrapositive of the second conditional statement in the stimulus would be:

If one is interested in the prospect of great personal fame, then one is either "Not employed" or "Not an artist" (or both).

Now Answer A mentions "Artists" as part of the sufficient condition, so Answer A can more precisely be diagrammed:

If "Artists" and "Interested in the prospect of great personal fame," then they are "sympathetic to social justice."

Since the sufficient here indicates that we are talking about Artists, this rules out the "Not an artist" possibility of "not employed artist" term, leaving only "Not employed." Since we now have both "Artists" and "Not employed," together those do mean "unemployed artists," which let's us then link to the final term of the conditional chain (sympathetic to social justice) by using the first conditional statement.

Hopefully, this explanation is helpful rather than confusing.

To be clear, that's probably more complicated than is necessary to solve the question, and I wouldn't recommend going through all that if doing this question in the middle of a timed test. If you simply diagram "unemployed artist" and "not employed artist" the same way, it ends up getting to the correct answer with less hassle, even though the terms aren't actually identical.

Thank you very much Jeff! This completely clears up my question!