#19 - Bureaucrat: The primary, constant goal of an ideal

[Alexandra Ruby]

Hi LSATer,

Yes, you are correct that Answer choice (A) is not correct because it simply restates the information in the stimulus.

However, to further clarify and to respond to your question about logically negating Answer Choice (A), the correct logical negation of "an ideal bureaucracy will..." in the answer choice is not "will not." Rather, the correct negation is "an ideal bureaucracy could possibly..."

Recall that the logical negation of something requires you to cover all logical possibilities from 0-100. So if the answer choice states that something will happen, i.e. that it is inevitable or 100%, the logical opposite is the possibility from 0-99 that it could or could not happen.

So if you plug in "an ideal bureaucracy could provide an appeal procedure for complaints even after it has defined and classified all possible problems and set out regulations regarding each eventuality." it does not destroy the argument in the stimulus.

Hop this helps!

[LSATer]

Got it! Thank you!

[cmnoury1221]

Hello,
I do not entirely understand the negated form of answer choice B; is this answer choice wrong bc the negated form does not connect with the ever-expanding system of regulations?

Thank you!!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Carolyn,

As Steve mentioned in his post above, the negated form of answer choice B is, "For each problem that an ideal bureaucracy has defined and classified, the bureaucracy has not necessarily received at least one complaint revealing that problem." That is functionally the equivalent of saying that there could be some problems that the ideal bureaucracy has defined and classified, but has not received any complaints about. In other words, the ideal bureaucracy might not have received complaints about certain problems, but they might have been able to anticipate those problems from the beginning of the bureaucracy and put regulations in place to address those anticipated problems. That's not a problem for the argument, and wouldn't destroy its validity, because the argument is focused instead on what the consequence is of complaints that reveal unanticipated problems. Assuming the bureaucracy is always receiving at least some complaints that reveal unanticipated problems (the correct answer), and adding the premise that the bureaucracy will craft new regulations for those unanticipated problems, the conclusion follows that the ideal bureaucracy will have an "ever-expanding system of regulations," even if there are some problems that the bureaucracy anticipated (by defining and classifying) and didn't receive complaints about.

Since the negated form of answer choice B is consistent with the argument and its conclusion, answer choice B is not a necessary assumption of the argument.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[ToadKing]

Hi,

I had a question about C. I ended up choosing it because none of the other answers seemed correct, but when I negated C it did not seem to destroy the argument.

To me, the stimulus points out two ways that a government can issue new regulations. (1) According to the first sentence, the government itself will always search for problems to classify/define. (2) According to the the remaining premises, the public can also complain, which can yield more regulations.

(C) says that a bureaucracy will never permanently be without complaints. However, if I logically negate it to "an ideal bureaucracy will sometimes be permanently without complaints" couldn't the conclusion still stand because the government can continue to expand its system of regulations by defining/classifying problems that they find themselves?

Thank you!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hello Toad,

Answer choice (C) is interesting from a negation perspective. It's a bit more complex here than switching never to sometimes. Why? Because of that term "permanently." Once something is permanent, it doesn't change. So something can't be sometimes permanent. If I permanently bulldoze my house, it's not sometimes bulldozed. It's done. It's like flipping a switch.

So how do you negate answer choice (C)? You have to negate the never and the permanently together. The negation is something like "the bureaucracy will sometimes be permanently without complaints." What does that even mean? Remember that "sometimes" means at least one time. So here, it means that there will be a time that the bureaucracy is permanently without the category of complaints described.

If we put that into the argument, it hurts the conclusion. Because once the bureaucracy hits the point where they are permanently without new complaints, they won't have an ever-expanding list of things that need regulations to fix. Therefore, it must be required that the bureaucracy is never permanently without those complaints.

Hope that helps!

[lsater180]

Hello team!

I got this question correct, but upon review, I realized that I never tried negating biconditional and am still unsure of how to.

Would negating answer choice D look like "an ideal bureaucracy cannot reach its primary goal if, but only if, its system of regulations is always expanding to cover problems that had not been anticipated"? I'm so confused because normally when we negate conditionals, we'd only negate the necessary condition and test if it wrecks the conclusion but this time both sides of the conditional serve as necessary/sufficient conditions.

Thanks for your help!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi lsater,

Logically negating a biconditional can be a bit tricky. One thing to remember about biconditionals is that they are really expressing two different (but related) conditional statements in one sentence.

Let's first look at a more straightforward example:

"A will occur if and only if B occurs."

In essence, this statement is stating that "A is both sufficient and necessary for B, which also means that B is both sufficient and necessary for A."

This allows for only two possibilities, either A and B both occur, or neither occurs. The one thing that cannot happen is to have one occur without the other.

The most direct way of negating this statement would be to simply add the words "it is not the case that A will occur if and only if B occurs." While this is a correct logical negation of the original statement, it can still be confusing what this actually means in a practical sense/plain English.

If A is not both sufficient and necessary for B, then it is possible to either have A without B or B without A. In other words, it is possible to have one of these terms occurring without the other.

Looking at Answer D, the negation would be "it is not the case that an ideal bureaucracy can reach its primary goal if, but only if, its system of regulations is always expanding...."

What this negation means is that either it is possible for an ideal bureaucracy to reach its primary goal without its system of regulations always expanding or it is possible for its system of regulations to be always expanding without reaching its primary goal.

The way that you attempted to negate this statement is not correct because it creates a biconditional relationship between the logical opposite of the first original term and the original second term. We don't need to show that the opposite of the first term is sufficient and necessary for the second term. Instead, we simply need to show that one term can occur without the other.