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General questions relating to LSAT Logical Reasoning.
 Harman
  • Posts: 17
  • Joined: Feb 17, 2015
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#18203
If we have an unless equation such as:
(Unless we redistribute wealth, we will be unable to alleviate economic injustices and economic inequalities)

Would the and get turned into an or since we have to negate the condition? When we take the contrapositive of a conditional relationship the and gets switched to an or because of the negation that is taking place. Since we are also negating in the Unless Equation, I'm assuming that the negation has the same effect on the and an or?

Is the Unless equation simply a contrapositive; basically so we can turn the relation into a positive one because it is easier to understand compared to when it is in negative terms?

Thanks in advance.
 Nikki Siclunov
PowerScore Staff
  • PowerScore Staff
  • Posts: 1362
  • Joined: Aug 02, 2011
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#18206
Harman,

That's exactly correct. Let me give you a few simpler examples to illustrate the point:
Mary will either become a writer or a musician, unless she gets into law school.
The proper way to diagram this would be as follows:
NOT Writer and NOT Musician :arrow: Law School
NOT law school :arrow: Writer or Musician
Another example:
Unless you win the lottery, you will remain poor and unhappy.
Here, it would be sufficient to negate only one of the two sufficient conditions in order to establish that you won the lottery:
NOT Poor or NOT Unhappy :arrow: Won
NOT Win :arrow: Poor and Unhappy
Does that make sense? Let me know.

Thanks!
 Harman
  • Posts: 17
  • Joined: Feb 17, 2015
|
#18207
It does. Thanks.
All of these small nuances are finally becoming 2nd nature. :)

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