Nested Conditionals

[akalsi]

Hi,

I was wondering if there is someway you can explain to me how nested conditionals work. I've been trying to rack my brain on how to recognize these conditionals on LR questions, and any time I come across one, I end up diagramming it wrong, which I'm assuming is because I don't quite understand how nested conditionals work. How can one recognize one of these situations? What would be the best approach in tackling one of these situations.

Just as a point of reference, I was going through PT 70 LR1 questions 23 where I came across this. I read the explanation on the thread, but couldn't really get a general understanding on how these sorts of conditional questions work overall. I also read the blog post regarding nesting conditionals too. Could you explain in further detail how these work? Is there a list of questions/set of questions that's available to practice these types of conditional relationships?

Thank you in advance!

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi akalsi,

Great question! Thanks for letting us know what you've already done to figure it out for yourself; that helps us better target the answer to you. We can give you general advice, but it wouldn't differ much from the blog post; it might be more helpful if we can get a sense of how you're approaching these questions so we can help address your specific issues with nested conditionals. Can you walk me through how you approached PT 70 LR1 question 23, what your reasoning was, etc.?

[akalsi]

Hi,

Basically when I went through this question I understood it to be a normal conditional:

From the first sentence, this was my understanding: most people favour bill + not violate human rights bill not passed for many years + similar bill not passed

the second sentence: if bill passed (someone who's adversely affected those individuals very influential)

Last sentence: if country democracy not well-functioning one


So from this I thought answer choice B is what strengthens what I constructed above. I figured that the conditional brought about with this answer choice, when negated, would support the conclusion: If democracy well functioning bill opposed by other people and favoured by most others will eventually pass into law.
but since we know it won't pass into law (i.e. the negation of the necessary condition) democracy is not well functioning.

I'm unsure if I even made my conditionals right, or if there is a different approach to understanding this stimulus. Im having a hard time understanding how to diagram answer choice E as well.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for the further clarification of your question, akalsi - that really helps us to make sure we are giving you a helpful response!

The first sentence here actually isn't conditional at all. There's nothing in it that is sufficient for the bill not passing, nothing that tells us "whenever this happens, a bill does not pass". All it does is tell us a little about the background of the bill - it is favored by most and doesn't violate human rights. That's not conditional at all, merely descriptive. If I say "this chocolate ice cream is delicious", I'm not saying that IF ice cream is chocolate THEN it is delicious; I'm just describing the ice cream.

The second sentence is not necessarily treated as a nested conditional, just a "normal" conditional: If the bill passes and If it adversely affects someone, that person is influential. More simply, if the passed bill adversely affects someone, that person is influential. The contrapositive is: If a person is not influential, then passing that bill would not adversely affect them. The key is not to over-complicate these things. Going back to the original post in this forum about this question, review what Nikki said about taking a more holistic approach. Here's that link:

lsat/viewtopic.php?t=7733

You'll see in that discussion more about what's wrong with answer B, particularly that it brings up the idea of influential people opposing the bill, which is not explicitly a part of our stimulus. For all we know, all the influential people that would be adversely affected nevertheless supported the bill! Maybe they see that it is good for most people and so they are willing to take the hit for the greater good? Wouldn't it be nice to live in that world?

Take another look at those first two sentences and I think you'll see that you made things more complicated than they needed to be, and may have made a bad assumption about who might oppose the bill.

Adam