#17 - Teacher: Journalists who conceal the identity of the

[Mastering_LSAT]

My apologies, but I may have gotten to the point of answering my own question.

Necessary Condition Requirements: “only if” (other requirements not explicitly specified are possible) vs “the only” (other requirements that are not explicitly specified are not possible)

In this argument the author uses “only if” for the requirements for Accepted for Publication. The author does not preclude other requirements from either being possible or impossible for Accepted for Publication. If the author used “the only” for the requirements for Accepted for Publication, then we would have known that only the requirements specified by the author are the requirements for Accepted for Publication and nothing else is / could be a requirement.

“Only if” – other requirements that are not explicitly specified are possible, if not explicitly prohibited by the author elsewhere in the argument.

“The only” – only the requirements that are explicitly specified by the author are possible and all other requirements do not exist / not possible.

[Adam Tyson]

That's pretty good, Mastering, but even in some cases of "the only" you can still have additional requirements. Consider this:

The only way you can get past the security checkpoint is if you have proper ID.

This means that proper ID is required, without exception, but it still doesn't mean that there are no additional requirements. Maybe you also need to go through a metal detector? Going through the metal detector doesn't mean you don't need ID, but neither does having ID mean you get to bypass the metal detector.

Basically, necessary conditions are minimum requirements. There can be many things that are required!

[Mastering_LSAT]

Adam, thank you very much for your detailed explanation!

Is there any LR question that you can point out where "the only" (or its restrictive equivalent) were used to indicate a necessary condition but the correct answer hinged on the idea that those were the minimum requirements and additional requirements were possible? I like to keep track of the questions that illustrate a specific concept.

Thanks again for all the help.

[Adam Tyson]

Off the top of my head, no, I don't recall any other specific examples of this. Just be aware that it can happen!

[Mastering_LSAT]

Got it. Thanks, Adam!

[sqmusgrave]

I chose A because the teacher is talking about sources who are concealed, yet the student responds saying the journalist doesn't need any sources at all.
To me it seems like the teacher is talking about a specific/small case i.e. marginal cases, whereas the student tries to say that the conditions of this specific case mean that- in general- journalists can do away with sources by meeting the criteria for this specific condition.
Because of this, I thought A was correct, since it seems to get at the jump from this one specific area where they use sources to saying something about all journalistic sources.
I don't think that this choice has to do with what is "actually true" (though I'm not 100% on what that means!), I think when you think of it in terms of confusing what's true of a specific group as being true for a whole group then this AC can be seen as getting at the logical error rather than the "specific reality" error.
Can you help me understand why my thought process is wrong?

Thanks!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi sqmusgrave!

Regarding answer choice (A), ultimately we don't know whether or not what the teacher is talking about is a marginal journalistic practice. Do feel free to point out if you see otherwise, but I don't see any specific language in what the teacher says that indicates how marginal or not the practice is.

The teacher is saying, when journalists don't reveal the identity of someone they quote, they "stake their professional reputations" on what the teacher explains is the "logic of anecdotes"--i.e., they know that such quotes will only be accepted if the quote is highly plausible, original, or of interest to a particular audience. The teacher doesn't seem to take a position for or against concealing identities--perhaps there are reasons for this practice, such as protecting the source from embarrassment or harassment. The stimulus doesn't go that far. Rather, the teacher is just making a statement about the conditions under which such quotes will be accepted for publication.

The student seems to infer incorrectly that it's unnecessary to "bother with sources in the first place." It's certainly possible, as the student suggests, that a journalist could invent quotes or stories. But there's nothing in the teacher's statement that takes a position of support, opposition, or anything else with respect to making up quotes (presumably the teacher would be against that). This is why the student's response is flawed--it ignores the possibility that the teacher might view that statements must "have actually been made" as a prerequisite for publication.