#17 - People cannot devote themselves to the study of

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Sarah,

Your diagram is perfect! Don't let the fact that it is a compound sentence fool you; think of that first sentence as two separate conditional rules joined by a conjunction; the first rule ends and the second begins at the "..., and...".

The test-makers do fairly often use compound sentences to lay out more than one rule at once, so now you will know to look for them!

Also, it is a main point question; they are covered in lesson 1, on page 1-16, although this question stem is pretty unusual and so I absolutely understand why you didn't recognize it.

Keep working hard!

[swt2003]

NOT Leisure -----> NOT Study (contrapositive If study -------> Leisure)

Resources Plentiful <---------> Leisure (not when resources are scare) This statement is a bi-conditional. This means that resources are plentiful if and only if leisure is present.

Conclusion:

Discoveries were a result of Studying natural processes.

Therefore:

If study ---------> Leisure , AND because of the bi-conditional, we know that if we had leisure then we had Plentiful Resources

Study------->Leisure <--------->Plentiful Resources

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi swt2003,

Great work on the first diagram! For the second part of that first sentence, though, it should be diagrammed Leisure resources plentiful. If people have leisure, then resources must have been plentiful. However, just because resources are plentiful does not necessarily mean people have leisure - be careful about a mistaken reversal, here! Fortunately, though, that mistaken reversal didn't trip you up, and you made the correct chain. Good work!

[hwkim93]

Dear PowerScore,

I'm a bit confused about Emily's response to swt2003 above, where she corrects swt2003's biconditional diagram.

My confusion arose when I saw that a few years ago, Nikki (also from PowerScore) stated that resources plentiful and leisure were biconditional. I understood and agreed with Nikki's reasoning because the stimulus states both "people have leisure when resources are plentiful" (i.e. resources plentiful leisure) and "not [have leisure] when resources are scarce" (i.e. NOT resources plentiful NOT leisure). With the latter's contrapositive (i.e. leisure resources plentiful) we can create the biconditional: resources plentiful leisure.

Is Emily pointing to something that I'm missing here? Hope that made sense.

Thank you.

[Brook Miscoski]

Kim,

There are all kinds of fun going on in the stimulus.

If you read the two clauses completely independently of each other, the first one does tell you that "Resources Plentiful-->Leisure," and the second one does tell you that "Leisure-->Resources Not Scarce" (this difference is important).

That fact makes this stimulus difficult.

It's fair that you felt this was a biconditional, and "if and only if." Indeed, it's very close to one and you would still realize that Agriculture requires Study of Natural Processes and therefore Plentiful Resources whether or not you treat the statement as a biconditional.

The reason Emily treats this as a simple conditional statement is that the stimulus doesn't give you a true biconditional--remember logical opposites versus polar opposites? "Not Scarce" just isn't the same as "Plentiful." That's why it's fair to treat the stimulus as using those two clauses to indicate simply that Leisure depends on having resources.

Avoiding Mistaken Reversals is very important, and you should take Emily's advice and be skeptical before diagramming a biconditional (which, if it's wrong, will include a Mistaken Reversal). Here, the stimulus language was a bit imprecise, and that creates a difficult ambiguity, so if I were you I wouldn't go around doubting myself over whether this is a biconditional.

[blade21cn]

I fully agree with Brook's point that "resources not scarce" is not the same as "resources plentiful," as there could be "resources mediocre (just enough to get by)" in that spectrum - thus, "Leisure → Resources." But (C) states "agriculture first began in societies that at some time in their history had PLENTIFUL resources." So it seems that we do need "Leisure → Resources plentiful" to justify this answer choice. Thanks!

[Tajadas]

I got this question right because I took "the argument is structured" in the stem as an excuse to not be as stringent with my reasoning, but I too have issues with this diagram.

I got Agriculture -> natural processes -> L -> NOT scarce. NOT scarce to me is not the same as plentiful. For the two to be equivalent, there would have to be a dichotomy, so NOT scarce-> plenty and NOT plenty -> scarce. I don't see why that has to be the case. Maybe NOT scarce -> moderate resources

[KelseyWoods]

Hi blade21cn & Tajadas!

As Brook explains above, technically there is a slight difference between "not scarce" and "plentiful." In this stimulus, it's not really an important difference and, as others have diagrammed and discussed earlier in this thread, you could still treat it as a biconditional, even though this is slightly less accurate. (It comes down to your interpretation of "plentiful"--for the purposes of this argument I would think of it as you either have enough resources (resources plentiful/not scarce) or you don't (resources scarce/not plentiful).)

But don't get so caught up just in this sentence. Think about the argument as a whole. What is the author really driving at? What is the author's main conclusion?

In terms of looking for a main conclusion, we have a better clue in that second sentence: "Although some anthropologists claim that agriculture actually began under conditions of drought and hunger...". What do we know about arguments that involve a "Some people say..." statement? Usually, the author's main point is to argue against whatever some people say! So some people say that agriculture began under conditions of resource scarcity, our author is presenting evidence to argue the opposite--that it began under conditions in which resources were more plentiful.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey