#23 - If a piece of legislation is the result of negotiation

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[Leagle]

Hello PowerScore Team,

I am having trouble understanding why Answer Choice B is the correct answer to question 23. Initially, Answer Choice B appeared attractive because it mentioned necessary and sufficient conditions and the stimulus incorporates conditional reasoning. Though, I was unable to see the connection between Answer Choice B and the stimulus. In the second sentence of the stimulus, the statement, "groups are clearly unhappy with it" appears to be the sufficient condition, not a condition that has been made necessary by the claim that the condition leads to that result. Additionally, the statement, "it will not satisfy any of those competing groups" (which I believe is analogous to the statement in the second sentence) appears to be the necessary condition, not a sufficient condition.

Thank you in advance for your help and thank you for all the amazing work you do for the LSAT prep community!

Leagle Egal

[Who Ray]

Leagle Egal!

This is one of the fun times where symbolizing in logical reasoning is quite helpful!
I symbolized the premise as N&C not satisfied
And the conclusion as not satisfied N&C

I prephrased for an AC that talks about a mistaken reversal and found B.

I find that quick symbolizations and investing some time in the stimulus saves me from having to think too hard about what sufficient and necessary markers are matching up.

I hope that helps and that you lsat score soars!
Who Ray

[Leagle]

Thank you, Who Ray!

I see the Mistaken Reversal. The description of the flaw presented in Answer Choice B makes much more sense after looking at your sketch. N&C are the Sufficient conditions in the first sentence, and then switched (incorrectly) to the Necessary condition in the second sentence.

Thanks again!

Leagle Egal

[mjb514]

I had a hard time choosing B because the rule states "negotiation and compromise" while the example only addresses the "compromise." - Can you please explain this.

Also can you please explain why E is wrong.

[Brook Miscoski]

mjb,

This is one of those times where you have to remember the section instructions--"You should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible..." Of course, that's a bit cold, since after all we know the LSAT folks are constantly trying to slip a detail by us, but read on...

How can you compromise without a negotiation? The LSAT writers know that people are practicing to pick out details, and they exploited that by faking the omission of a detail. But the definition of compromise includes negotiation, and nothing was left out.

But here's why you should be looking to pick B. When you read through this stimulus, what pops out is that there is a mistaken reversal. B talks about a mistaken reversal, and is likely to be correct.

E is wrong because there is no difference between the types of cases that we know of. A flaw answer, remember, has to describe what happened in the stimulus. There was an error of conditional reasoning.

[mcassidy1]

I had a hard time diagramming the conclusion and diagrammed it the same as the premise and wound up with answer a. How I am supposed to know how to diagram that sentence?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi M,

Thanks for the question! Consider that the typical Mistaken Reversal actually looks something like this:

• Premise: A B
  
  Premise: B
  
  Conclusion: A

That second premise-to-conclusion relationship implies that the author believes B A, which is the reverse of the original premise. So, you are typically looking for that premise-to-conclusion relationship when we talk about contrapositives, reversals, negations, repeats, etc.

In this argument, they set up the argument in a different premise/conclusion order, namely putting the conclusion in the middle:

• Premise: A B
  
  Conclusion: A
  
  Premise: B

That has no functional effect on meaning, but it can be confusing. So, applying the terms of the argument, we get:

• Premise: N&C not satisfied
  
  Conclusion: N&C
  
  Premise: not satisfied

The LSAT often forces you to see equivalences in terms, such as "not satisfy " being the same as "clearly unhappy" in this problem. So, this is something you learn to look for (and you'll get better at that if this gave you trouble). Then, they will use order to cause confusion. Despite that, the premise-to-conclusion relationship implied in the second half of the stimulus is a Mistaken Reversal: not satisfied N&C.

Hopefully that helps clear this up a bit, but once you do a bunch of conditional problems, this will seem a lot easier.

Thanks!