#25 - There can be no individual freedom without the rule of

[AthenaDalton]

Hi lathlee,

It's not critical to realize that the particular phrase you highlighted is irrelevant to completing this problem. What's important is piecing together the parts of the argument that are necessary to justify the argument's conclusion. On the LSAT, as in legal practice, there will be some extraneous sentences / details that are not essential to solving the problem. It's ok to have some tools left over after you've selected the right answer choice!

Good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[deck1134]

Hi PowerScore,

I have read the above explanation for this question, and am sorry to beat a dead horse.

Can we conclude that the "good life" part is irrelevant simply because it isn't needed in finding the correct answer? I ask because I first attempted to solve the problem mechanistically, without realizing that the good life was irrelevant, and arrived at the wrong answer.

How do we make sure to discount irrelevant information in this instance? The JUSTIFY FORMULA specifically says to look for rogue elements, and this question seems to foil that plan.

[Dave Killoran]

How do we make sure to discount irrelevant information in this instance? The JUSTIFY FORMULA specifically says to look for rogue elements, and this question seems to foil that plan.

Careful here, Deck. The Justify Formula says that rogue elements are often involved in correct answers, but it doesn't say that every single rogue element must be involved in the correct answer. As noted in the main explanation, there is the idea of the relevant premises to the creating the conclusion. The test makers are plenty smart, and can easily toss in useless information as a distraction. Here's a simple example:

• Premise: A B
  
  Premise: C D
  
  Premise: E
  
  Conclusion: A D

In the example above, the answer B C would work perfectly, but note how E, which is a rogue element, is irrelevant to the argument. It effectively serves as a distraction inside the problem, but would surely show up in multiple answers.

It's good to think about these problems from the bigger picture, but always keep in mind the test makers have so many avenues of attack you have to be flexible in your thinking.

Thanks!

[deck1134]

Thanks, Dave!

[jdavidwik]

"Even though there are no conclusion indicators to help us identify the conclusion, note that the
remainder of the sentence contains two premises that support the observation in the first clause:
first, there is no individual freedom without social integrity, and second, pursuing the good life
is not possible without social integrity."

I do not see how the second independent clause supports the first independent clause. The second clause could be considered superfluous/extraneous as noted as well, but alternatively couldn't one see the "good life" independent clause as the Conclusion? We have a Compound-Complex sentence, so how can one deem one independent clause more central than the other? I have not read a convincing explanation addressing this point, but rather I see that there is evasion which just consigns the "good life" independent clause to irrelevance or premise status when it does not appear to be so straightforward that either of these is definitively the case.

[jdavidwik]

Premise: A > B

Premise: E > B

Conclusion: A > C

Answer: B > C

As Dave says above, E "is a rogue element, (and) is irrelevant to the argument. It effectively serves as a distraction inside the problem". He goes on to advise being flexible in one's thinking. This is the first example of such type of question that I have come across, and I could see where having a red herring here and there in the LSAT would imitate a real legal scenario. It seems to be a question that is a time sink not just in a mechanistic sense but in a way that demands an intuitive sense of when and what to eliminate as irrelevant. Maybe the only way to note them quickly is after much LR practice?

[Adam Tyson]

I do not see how the second independent clause supports the first independent clause.

That's because it doesn't actually support it, jdavidwik! But whether a premise actually supports a conclusion or not is a question about the validity of the argument, not the structure of the argument, and while we can see that it's just a red herring and of no value here, the author appears to have believed that it supported his conclusion. It's a premise not because it provides support, but because the author INTENDED that it provide support. The premise indicator "for" after the first phrase tells us that the two statements that follow are meant to be used as premises. Whether the argument is valid or not (it's not) is a different question entirely!

Practice is the best way to get familiar with this sort of pattern, which is not that rare on the test. Many conditional stimuli include a claim that does not connect, and does not need to connect, to the other claims. Through diagramming these statements we can get better at seeing which ones connect and which ones don't, and use that information to form our prephrases and avoid answer traps that involve those outlier claims that have no place in the correct answer.

[jdavidwik]

Adam, thanks for your numerous insights and for pointing out some of my blind spots, which vision could be improved with practice as you say.

Just before you replied, I referred back to my notes from Formal Logic>Symbolic Logic, re a past course. In reviewing syllogisms we had pointed out numerous examples of valid vs. invalid arguments and why invalid arguments could be so. Sound vs. unsound arguments were also covered at the same time. In jumping back to this example I can see that it does concern that level of analysis just above structure as you state; form informs the validity of the argument.

I referred to the original Administrator's explanation when I stated, "I do not see how the second independent clause supports the first independent clause.", but I had not seen that after that explanation stated that the "good life" clause supported the conclusion, it then proceeded to state that it did not support the conclusion. Admittedly I should not have cherry-picked there, and I should have read on. Instead I had read an explanation in another place, not PowerScore-related, which also claimed thusly, and the two did not gibe with Dave's later explanation. I may have been too mechanical there; when I reached a line of PowerScore code that did not compute, I aborted the program when I should have scanned down a bit.

Anyway I see that you give good advice, as such "intended premises" may signal a flaw in reasoning or a deliberate attempt at persuasion via a false premise, or just extraneous information. I think I need to keep practicing and not be intimidated. I was also trying to avoid diagramming before when what looked like straightforward stimuli arose, but I can see now that I need to diagram these statements of conditional stimuli as a rule. Not doing that potentially leads into trap answers.

[h3voc007]

Thank you so much for all these explanations. One thing is, however, still not clear for me and I would really appreciate someone's help with it:

Simplifying the argument and taking out the distraction of the second premise, we can say:

CONCLUSION: NO RL ---> NO IF
PREMISE: NO SI ---> NO IF

Accordingly, the answer would be NO SI ----> NO RL, which is exactly answer choice A.

Could someone explain what I am missing here? I would really appreciate it, as I encountered a similar problem with PrepTest 47 Section 3 Question 21 and the problem may be similar. Thank you so much in advance!

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey h3voc007,

Let's try this strategy and see if this clears things up for you.

First map out the premises: No good life-----> No social integrity-----> No individual freedom

Conclusion: No rule of law------>No individual freedom

So remember, the conclusion is invalid, so technically they have not successfully made that leap.



So what you want to do is, you want to add the true answer choice to the true premises, and see if that makes the original untrue conclusion come true.

Your answer choice, A, when we add No social integrity---->No rule of law. We still do not have a way to link no rule of law to no individual freedom.

When we add answer choice B to the premises we get
No rule of law--->No social integrity---->No individual freedom.

Which makes our conclusion true.

What I do to see this, because I'm not great at spacial thinking is, I map out the premises and then I separate the conclusion on my paper leaving a large blank, then I bring down my premises and see how I can possibly make that conclusion come true with my answer choices.

I hope all this helps and I wish you all the luck.

Best,
Ryan