#21 - Newspaper editor: Law enforcement experts, as well

[Oneshot06]

Thanks Adam! I really appreciate the explanation.

[psalom625]

A. No effective law is unenforceable - This answer choice can be translated to All effective laws are enforceable. No X's are Y's is the same as All X's are NOT Y's. In this case, we are negating "unenforceable" which becomes enforceable. Then reverse and negate to get the contrapositive.

- Enforceable ----> - Effective

We can feed this into our conditional statement in the passage:

- Effective ----> - Law

we combine the two statements

By combining, we see that if a law is not enforceable then it's not effective, we know from the passage if a law is not effective it should not be a law.

Not Enforceable ----> Not Effective ------> Not Law

wouldn't it be combined as Enforceable -> Effective -> Law
?

[James Finch]

Hi P. Salom,

No, that would be the Mistaken Negation. The conditional given in the stimulus is:

Effective Should Be Law

And we're given that gambling laws are Enforceable. So to justify the conditional reasoning we need:

Enforceable Effective

in order to create:

Enforceable Effective Should Be Law

The contrapostive of that would look like:

Should Be Law Effective Enforceable

Hope this clears thing up!

[kupwarriors9]

Why is A) right and B) is incorrect? Thanks.

Newspaper editor: Law enforcement experts, as well as most citizens, have finally come to recognize that legal prohibitions against gambling all share a common flaw: no matter how diligent the effort, the laws are impossible to enforce. Ethical qualms notwithstanding, when a law fails to be effective, it should not be a law. That is why there should be no legal prohibition against gambling.

A) No effective law is unenforceable.

B) All enforceable laws are effective.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Kup,

This question already has an explanation thread in this forum, at: viewtopic.php?f=632&t=3862

We've moved it over there, so please read the already existing discussion here as a starter. Thanks!

[charleschenrx8]

Here's my understanding of #21 about why choosing A

First, We know that gambling laws are impossible to enforce
Gambling law unenforceable
Second, we know that a law fails to be effective, it should not be a law
No effective No law
which means Law effective



So we wanted to prove that the gambling law should not exist, which means
Gambling laws not effective

we know that the gambling law is unenforceable, and how can we know it is also not effective?
so we want an answer showing the relationship between not effective and unenforceable, which means A is correct
And why B is incorrect?
B said All enforceable laws are effective, and because there's no evidence in the argument mentioned unenforceable laws that are not effective, and we cannot assume this evidence by answer B because then we'll have a reasoning problem.

[teddykim100]

hi all,

this is more just a general question but,

I find that I when I read a conditional reasoning question, a lot of the times I didn't even recognize that it was conditional.

To be clear, I'm more used to seeing conditional logic presented as something simple:

If it rains in the morning, it will rain at night

So when conditional logic appears as it does in this format, I don't recognize it at all. I just approach it as any other Assumption family question, and get very confused.

My question is when do we transform question premises into a conditional statement? aka what scenarios? How do we know when we're up against a conditional logic type?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi teddykim100!

This is a great thing to be aware of, especially because improving in this area is manageable and can produce noticeable results in terms of getting a higher score.

In part, this is because of the obvious point that conditional reasoning pervades the LSAT. It's not just present in the logical reasoning section, but also in games and in reading comprehension. But often, as you note, the conditional reasoning is less immediately obvious because it isn't always phrased in the "if...then..." format.

If you have PowerScore's course materials, a great way to improve on identifying conditional reasoning in the varieties of forms it may come in is to review Lesson 2, starting at 2-6. Reviewing that lesson and its homework is very helpful for making it more a matter of mechanical, rote application to spot conditional reasoning. It's also helpful for identifying flaws like Mistaken Negation and Mistaken Reversal, as well as getting better at the Assumption Negation technique, contrapositives, and conditional reasoning using the word "unless."

Page 2-8 is especially helpful in terms of a guide that could be helpful to memorize or review often. It includes a table of words that indicate a sufficient condition (e.g., if, whenever, in order to) and those that indicate a necessary condition (e.g., then, only if, unless, except). So to your question of how to know one is facing conditional reasoning, seeing one of these words should sound an alarm to look out for it.

Finally, though conditional reasoning will often be phrased in ways other than if-then statements, you can always try to think about a statement you have read more abstractly and then rephrase it in your own words in the if-then format. Being familiar with the table on 2-8 will facilitate this becoming more of a reflex, but even without referencing that resource, you can sketch out statements using an arrow and then confirm that it represents what you have read.

[LawSchoolDream]

Hi Voodoo,

Yes, correct. I will note for others reading that you've presented the contrapositive of the first statement. Read as-is, I would normally diagram that as Effective Enforceable, but the contrapositive removes both negatives, which is helpful.

Thanks!

Hi, I'm a little lost with this stimulus. I was able to get NotEffective --> NotLaw and the contrapositive however I could not get from Enforcable to Effective. Can you please expand on how to get there?

And also looking at your explanation above, I see a contradiction for answer choice A. The way its notated is very different than what I learnt in the Bible, page 197 - No robot can think. R---> NotThink. canyon please explain the discrepancy?

[Robert Carroll]

LawSchoolDream,

The sentences in the post Dave is replying to are part of a student's attempt to see whether there's a difference between the two. They're not in the stimulus. One of them doesn't even help the argument.

I don't see a contradiction. The second sentence the student offered is answer choice (A), and that follows the pattern you noted - keep the "none" part as sufficient, and negate the other part to make it necessary. So "No effective law is unenforceable" = effective enforceable, which is what the student said.

Robert Carroll