#13 - If you climb mountains, you will not live to a ripe

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[zubinator3000]

I answered this question correctly but would like clarification as to why E is incorrect?

[James Finch]

Hi Zubinator,

The stimulus sets up the following conditional chain:

Climbing Mountains (CM) Ripe Old Age (ROA)

and

Bored CM

and concludes that

ROA CM Bored

This is the logically valid inference that

A B C

means A C

and

C A

The correct answer choice, (C), follows this same logical chain.

Answer choice (E) starts off with the same sort of chain:

Spend Wealthy

and

Hungry Spend

from which we could conclude

Wealthy Hungry (the contrapositive of the chain).

But the author screwed it up, instead concluding that if you get wealthy you will NOT be hungry. That's the wrong necessary condition! It makes sense in the real world that wealthy people probably won't be hungry, because they can afford food, but that common sense is not reflected in the logical chain here.

[bella243]

Hi, I eliminated A, B, and E because the language of conclusions does not match the language of the stimulus conclusion. Is this warranted or should I have eliminated only A?

[Adam Tyson]

Doubling the Conclusion will help to eliminate answers A and B here, bella243, but not answer E. If you were thinking that the negative in that answer - will not become hungry - is enough to kill it, that would be incorrect. The certainty in the conclusion is what matters, not whether the terms are put in the negative of the positive form. "You will not become hungry" is the same as saying "you will be not hungry" or even the strange sounding "you will be unhungry." Focus on the structure, not on that "polarity", when matching conclusions or premises.