#25 - Principle: Meetings should be kept short, addressing

[LSAT2018]

So does the answer (C) provide a link for the chain below?

Address Issue → Relevant to Majority → No Issues of Relevance (Terry) → Not Required to Attend (Terry)

[Adam Tyson]

Perfect!

[Karlhoff]

I envisioned a company finance meeting, where Terry's sole responsibility in the company is organizing the holiday party.

Given that the finance topics being discussed are unrelated to Terry's role, there is no need for Terry to attend the meeting.

C) Wrong - Everyone cares about the party. There are many issues relevant to Terry that are surely relevant to the majority in the meeting.

E) Suboptimal, but at least necessary.

I find this question very difficult to understand.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Karl,

Based on your comments, I think that you may be going about this question the wrong way.

This is a strengthen question. The question asks "Which one of the following, if true, most justifies the stated application of the principle?"

"Most justifies" is what indicates that it is a strengthen question.

For the purpose of doing this question, you can think of the principle as the premises of the argument and the application as the conclusion. You are trying to find an answer that, if true, helps you get from the premises (the principle) to the conclusion (the application).

It's important to realize that you are accepting the answers as true. Your comment that "There are many issues relevant to Terry that are surely relevant to the majority in the meeting" directly contradicts what this answer is stating.

Instead, you should ask yourself, if Answer C is true, and there aren't any things that are relevant to Terry that are relevant to the majority, how would that affect the conclusion (the application).

By plugging in Answer C into the argument, it supports the conclusion (in other words, the application).

If meetings only discuss issues relevant to the majority (the first sentence in the principle) and nothing relevant to the majority is also relevant to Terry (Answer C), then nothing relevant to Terry will be discussed at the meeting. From the second sentence in the principle, if none of the issues discussed in the meeting are relevant to that person, then that person should not be required to attend.

This gets you to the conclusion that Terry should not be required to attend the meeting.

[karenparson]

I just had this LR question from preptest 53. It's this one:

Principle: Meetings should be kept short, addressing only those issues ...
The correct answer is C.

Obviously you can rule out A and B because the principle doesn't say anything about presentations. D is irrelevant. And E can't be right because it doesn't matter whether or not the majority of issues are relevant to Terry, just if any are or none are.

By process of elimination C is the only answer which even resembles something correct. I believe I can wrap my head around the logic of it. We know meetings shouldn't be held if the issues aren't relevant to a majority, so if anything relevant to Terry wouldn't be relevant to majority, then nothing relevant to Terry is going to be discussed and he doesn't need to attend.

But I still disagree with the answer choice. My logic is that the principle only tells us about what should happen in meetings, not what will always happen. In other words, even if an issue is irrelevant to a majority of people, the principle doesn't definitively say it won't be discussed at the meeting, just that it shouldn't be. So how can we determine with certainty that just because relevant issues to Terry aren't relevant to a majority, they won't be discussed? To me it seems based on the principle it is in fact still possible that issues relevant to be Terry will be discussed at the meeting, even though they shouldn't be.

I think I might misunderstand something about how LSAT builds their questions.

[Stephanie Oswalt]

I just had this LR question from preptest 53. It's this one:

Principle: Meetings should be kept short, addressing only...

Hi Karen,

Thanks for the post. I have moved your question to the thread pertaining to this topic. Please review the discussion starting on page 1 of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=540&t=7891, and let us know if that helps or if you still have further questions. Thanks!