#9 - Technological improvements will enable food production

[ameliakate]

Hello –

I correctly selected answer choice B, but I am not seeing the logic behind this question clearly. I understood the stimulus as presenting:

1) Tech improvements increase food as population increases
2) Increase in food production -> society more centralized
3) More centralized society -> greater % of people perished in collapse
4) Tech improvements -> Increase food production -> more centralization -> greater % perish

Answer choice B provides that technology cannot prevent every problem associated with the collapse of a centralized society. I don’t see how that connection derives from the stated premises and conclusion. The need for increased food was not due to a centralized society, and the technological improvements in food production were enhanced with a centralized society; but not created to prevent the collapse of society.

I selected b because of “every problem associated.” I reasoned the need for increased food production led to the centralized society, which collapsed despite the technological improvements. While this got me to the right answer, I am not sure I’m actually understanding the connection correctly.

[James Finch]

Hi Amelia,

It looks like you made an error in the conditional diagram. What we're given for premises are:

Food Production Increased (FPI) Technological Innovations (TI)

FPI Societies More Centralized (SMC)

SMC Higher % Die In Societal Collapse (H%D)

The stimulus then concludes:

FPI H%D

So what's the issue? The conclusion requires an assumption that technological innovations don't somehow offset the historical tendency for a greater percentage to die during societal collapse, as increasing food production is a sufficient for both. We don't know what, if anything, technological innovations act as a sufficient condition for, so if we assume the conclusion to be true, we have to also assume that technological innovations don't offset the problems of a centralized society collapsing, since the stimulus gives us no direct relationship between the two.

Hope this clears things up!

[aghartism]

Hi,

I'm having a hard time reading the first sentence of the stimulus as stating that technological improvements are a necessary condition on food production's increasing as population increases.

The first sentence says "Technological improvements will enable food production to increase as population increases." As I read it, we're given that tech. improvements make possible increased food production.

Abstractly, we have X makes Y possible. One might read this as: without X, no Y. Then, we would indeed have that X is a necessary condition of Y. (It's just an application of the equivalence of the contrapositive to the previous claim.)

But, this seems to be an incorrect reading to me. X makes Y possible to me reads as: if X, then Y is possible, i.e. Y's being possible is a necessary condition on X. If Y is not possible, i.e. impossible, then we evidently do not have X. How is this a misread?

Then, to infer X from (1) Y and (2) that X makes Y possible in the following way using conditional proof---Y is actual, thus Y is possible, thus X---is to affirm the consequent, a formal fallacy.

Just consider a situation where X and Z are both independently sufficient for the possibility of Y. Then, it seems right to say "X makes Y possible, but X is not a necessary condition of Y."

What am I missing?

[aghartism]

Just want to add, before I forget:

In the stimulus of #14 on Preptest 49, Section 2, we can find another instance of the "X makes Y possible" construction:

...standing upright makes [free use of the hands] possible.

In this forum, in the explanation given, this is understood as stating that standing upright is a sufficient condition for free use of the hands. This is the opposite of what we find in the explanation in this thread, where X is a necessary condition of Y. What am I missing? Is "X will enable Y" really to be understood logically as the converse of "X makes Y possible"? That doesn't seem right.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi aghartism!

You comment,

The first sentence says "Technological improvements will enable food production to increase as population increases." As I read it, we're given that tech. improvements make possible increased food production. Abstractly, we have X makes Y possible.

Your reading sounds close. However, your reading makes more sense if the stimulus instead stated that technological improvements "can" or "could" enable food production.

Instead of that, though, we're told that technological improvements "will enable" food production increases. In other words, suppose food production increases have been enabled; according to the stimulus, if we have this, then we're told that technological improvements must have been (at least part of) what brought this about.

[aghartism]

Thanks for the reply, Luke.

Just to make sure: on the LSAT, "X will enable Y" and "X makes Y possible" should be read as converses of each other?

[aghartism]

Hi Luke,

I've thought a bit more about this. Let's suppose my reading would have been correct if the stimulus used "can" instead of "will". Well, I think we can both agree that if X will Y, then X can Y; actuality entails possibility. Thus, interpreting it merely as a conditional "if f.p.i. then tech. improvements" is misleading. It should be a biconditional instead.

So, either my reading would be wrong even if the stimulus used "can" instead of "will", or your reasoning in fact shows that a biconditional would be most appropriate. Is that what you intended?

Indeed, there are cases where the mere conjunction of X and Y entails the biconditional X iff Y. If one is working within classical logic and with material conditionals, then that entailment indeed holds. Taking "will" seriously as prophetic, as it were, we do have the relevant conjunction, but I assume the conditional here is not meant to be material. Unfortunately, there's less consensus among logicians regarding the semantics and rules of nonmaterial conditionals, so I'm left to seek the expertise of those familiar with the "mind" behind the LSAT.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi aghartism,

Putting aside any specialized knowledge of logic, as it is neither relevant to nor particularly useful for this test, we can understand this argument as having both causal and conditional elements to it. The tech innovation "will enable" (or will cause) increases in food production as the population increases. This can't be reversed, because using causal reasoning requires that the cause come before the effect---the tech innovation has to occur before the increase in food production. Then it turns conditional---that effect (increases in food production) requires that the society become centralized. However, historically, the more centralized a society was, the more people died if/when it fell. This is most useful to think of as a historical fact---that centralized societies historically have had a potential downside.

We can connect those ideas together to state that technological improvements will not prevent all possible bad impacts. If we are using history as a guide (which the stimulus does here) we use the conclusion drawn by the author to state that the improvement in food production caused by the technological improvements would still result (causal) in the increased death rate for those in the society when that society fell. That's a problem. Therefore, we can select answer choice (B) that the technological improvements would not remove every problem, as described more fully above.

Hope that helps!