#24 - Editorialist: Despite the importance it seems to have

[Adam Tyson]

Welcome to the Forum, am2gritt, and thanks for the question!

While we don't absolutely have to take a nested conditional approach to this question, it can be done because the conditional relationship of "if you don't believe in something, then it disappears" can itself be used as a sufficient condition for the necessary condition "then it does not really exist". Nested conditionals can be tricky, and there are ways of simplifying them that I think is more appealing most of the time. Here, for example, we can just say "if a lack of belief makes a thing disappear, then that thing didn't really exist in the first place."

What this is NOT is a three-part conditional chain, in my opinion. It's not "if you don't believe, then it disappears, and if it disappears then it never really existed." If that was what the argument was saying, that would mean we could link the first and last things in the chain and get "if you don't believe in something then it doesn't really exist," and the contrapositive would be "if a thing exists then you must believe in it." Neither of those statements matches what the author is trying to say here! Instead, he's saying "we know it doesn't exist because it disappears when you stop believing in it. Things that really exist don't do that."

So, you can take a nested conditional approach to this one, or you can take a simpler two-part conditional approach (which I prefer in this case and whenever I can do so without altering the original meaning of the argument). Do what works best for you!

[az305203]

You're so close, amanda3984! You have everything you need in your diagram and analysis!

It comes down to your excellent prephrase - if money exists, then it wouldn't disappear. Here's how we get there another way:

Premise: Believe Disappear

Conclusion: Exist

Prephrase - anything that disappears (when you do not believe in it) does not really exist: Disappear Exist

Contrapositive: If it really exists, then it would not disappear (when you don't believe in it)

This one might be easier to grasp if we diagrammed it as a "nested conditional", like this:

[Believe Disappear] Exist

We can read this in plain English this way:

If it is true that a lack of belief is sufficient for something disappearing,then that thing doesn't really exist

The first conditional claim about belief and disappearing is, itself, a sufficient condition, and "doesn't really exist" is the necessary condition. The contrapositve is if something DOES exist, then a lack of belief is NOT sufficient to make something disappear.

Put it another way, with a more holistic approach rather than using a diagram, and it means that when things truly exist, belief in them doesn't matter or change that fact. If belief changes something, that thing isn't real.

Nested conditional statements add a whole layer of complexity and fun to conditional reasoning! Thankfully we don't see too many of them. Let us know if this proved helpful, or if you'd like to get into it some more. We'll be here to help!

THANK YOU!! The mini nested conditional lesson was an incredibly useful bit of insight into Conditional Reasoning! I spent like 10 minutes trying to figure out why in the question explanation the Contrapositive of the chain needed to prove the conclusion triggered "must believe" which directly contradicted the answer choice's "even if everyone were to stop believing in it" clause!

[lolaSur]

Hi! I’ve read all explanations, questions, and answers so far and I still have some questions. I picked answer E. I am still having trouble solving justify the conclusion questions mechanically and more specifically with conditional reasoning, and finding and connecting rogue concepts.
I understood the argument to be the following:
Conclusion: Money doesn’t really exist
Because
Premise: When there is no belief money disappears

I understood this argument to be conditional and for “no belief” to be the sufficient indicator because the premise states: “all that would be needed to make money disappear is a universal loss of belief.” Because according to this premise ALL that I need to know to understand that money disappears is that there is a loss of belief, so I KNOW that if there is a loss of belief then money disappears. Consequently I diagramed the following:
No Belief Money disappears
No Money disappears Belief

Additionally, I mistakenly thought that the concepts “doesn’t exist” and “money disappears” meant the same thing. For this reason, I did not think of “doesn’t exist” as a rogue concept that needed to be connected with the premise. I am still having trouble identifying the elements that I need to connect in justify the conclusion questions. Is there a strategy to identifying the roque elements?

Because I did not identify the rogue element “doesn’t exist,” I focused on diagraming the example provided in the stimulus, “We witness this phenomenon on a small scale daily in the rises and falls of financial markets whose fluctuations are often entirely independent of concrete causes and are the results of mere beliefs of investors.”
Beliefs (cause) fluctuations (effects/ result)
I am not entirely sure whether the example about financial markets is conditional. I don’t think so. Could you please confirm?

Lastly I think it would have been possible for me to combine the conclusion and premise into one line:
Money doesn’t exist because when people do not belief in it money disappears.
No Belief  money disappears No Exist
Exist No Money disappears  Belief

Answer A states: “Anything that exists would continue to exist even if everyone were to stop believing in it.” Isn’t this answer choice the opposite of what I diagramed above? Answer choice A diagramed looks like:
Exist No belief or belief
No belief and belief No Exist

Am I correct to diagram answer A in this way? I understand “even if” in this context indicates a necessary term since “anything” signals to me that “exists” is a sufficient term in answer choice A.

Does answer A not contradict the conditional reasoning in the stimulus that No belief Money disappears No Exist ?
Or No belief No exist?

Thank you so much in advance for your help!

For my reference: L4, justify, 16-20, q.20

[James Finch]

Hi Lola,

As Adam noted above, this is a nested conditional which makes it much trickier. Nested conditionals occur whenever we have a conditional statement that is true only in the case of some sufficient condition that is given. Basically a condition then triggers a conditional relationship. They look something like:

if A {X Y}

which also means that, via the contrapositive,

if {X Y} A (i.e. if there is no actual conditional relationship, then the original sufficient condition cannot be true)

All the above being said, it's still possible to correctly answer this question with a mechanical conceptual approach. We have a conclusion that's trying to prove that money doesn't exist, with a premise that states that:

Beliefmoney Existmoney

This means we need a principle that says that existence is independent of belief, or in a nested conditional approach:

Actually Exists {Belief or Belief Continues to Exist}

As we have to show that {Belief Exist} Actually Exist

(A) gives us this, making it correct. The key in this question is to get to a Prephrase that says that an actually existing thing's objective existence is entirely independent of subjective belief in its existence.

Hope this helps!

[lolaSur]

Thank you for your response. I am revisiting this problem now, and I noticed that I am a bit confused by the stimulus's language. If you could please confirm whether my diagramming analysis is correct and whether my analysis of the answer choices is correct I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much!

1) "all that would be needed to make money disappear would be a universal loss of belief in it" can be diagrammed:

No Belief ---> Money Disappear
No Money Disappear ---> Belief

Here, if ALL that we need is no belief to make money disappear, then No Belief is sufficient to make money disappear.

2) "fluctuations are often entirely independent of concrete causes and are the results of mere beliefs of investors"

fluctuation ----> Belief
No Belief ---> No fluctuation

Here, we know that many things could be the result of mere belief of investors, but we know that if fluctuations occur then mere belief of investors' must have occurred because fluctuations are often independent of concrete causes, so we don't know that anything other than investors' beliefs causes the fluctuations to occur. We also don't know that the mere beliefs of investors do or don't cause things other than fluctuations.


My analysis of the answer choices:

Answer E - Is answer E incorrect because the word "whatever" causes the answer to be too broad?
Answer D - Is answer D incorrect because it is saying the opposite of what the argument says? For example answer D states "if everyone beliefs in something, then that thing exists." But when we look at our conditional diagram we see that believing in something is not sufficient for something to exist because believe is diagrammed as a necessary thing not as a sufficient thing (please see conditional diagrams above).

Answer A addresses the necessary condition of "belief" in the diagrams and eliminates the need for it by saying that something that exists does not necessitate people believing in it or is not dependent in people believing in it. People can belief or people cannot belief but the thing will continue to exist. This is the difference between something that exists and money which does not truly exists because it is dependent on peoples' believes.

Is this a correct analysis? Please let me know.

I am still very confused by the nested approach. Are there any articles that discuss this approach?

Thank you so much!

For my reference (L4, justify, 16-20, q20).

[Robert Carroll]

lola,

Your diagram labeled 1 looks good.

Diagram 2 is not correct, though. There's not a conditional relationship here, but a predication that sometimes a certain causal relationship exists. It's not really essential to the argument of the stimulus, because it's merely giving an example of the general idea - the idea that a loss of belief in money can cause it to disappear. This ability of money to disappear solely based on a lack of belief is supposed to mean that money doesn't really exist. So the connection we need is one that shows thing that can disappear due to a lack of belief are not really existing things.

Answer choice (E) is wrong because it doesn't prove the conclusion. The answer allows us to extrapolate from money to financial markets generally. But that doesn't help the conclusion. Note that it's NOT that the answer is too broad. For a Justify question, there is no such thing as "too broad," because an answer that proves the conclusion is still good even if it goes farther than needed. The problem with answer choice (E) is that it didn't give us enough information to establish the conclusion.

Answer choice (D) may be a bit contrary to the idea of the stimulus, but the real problem is simple - it doesn't prove the conclusion.

I like your analysis of answer choice (A).

There's a discussion of Nested Conditionals here: https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/powers ... he-day-26/

Robert Carroll

[amandaurban430@gmail.com]

I read the posts above about thinking through the logic of statements and not relying on indicator words, but is a conditional relationship even present in the stimulus? The words "make" and "phenomenon" seem like causal reasoning language. I got this question wrong because I think I tried to force a conditional relationship in my interpretation of the stimulus, when it should just be read as a cause and effect relationship.

Should the sentence "all that would be needed to MAKE money disappear would be a universal loss of belief in it" be interpreted as a causal relationship, rather than a conditional one? My understanding is that sufficient conditions do not "make" anything happen (they only indicate the past/present/future occurrence of something else). A cause would "make" an effect occur and since a causal relationship is distinct from a conditional one, we cannot consider any contrapositive. So I am confused by the explanation that a loss of belief is *sufficient* to make money disappear. Would a better way of paraphrasing the stimulus be that a loss of belief (cause) *could make* money disappear (effect)?

I think I have a better grasp on understanding the argument when I consider it as a causal argument.
Cause: loss of belief
Effect: $ disappear
Conclusion: $ does not exist

Pre-phrase: exists --> not[$ disappear]
^ This would be a conditional statement used to strengthen the causal relationship.
(Contrapositive of pre-phrase: $ disappear --> cannot exist)

So then answer A follows (anything that exists would continue to exist even if everyone were to stop believing in it).

Is my thought process correct here? Thanks.

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hi Amanda,

Thanks for the question! The conditional reasoning in the stimulus does not come from the word "make," but rather the phrase, "all that is needed." Sufficiency basically means enough, adequate, etc. That's why "all that is needed" indicates a sufficient condition.

You can also translate that sentence into if-then wording, which makes the conditional reasoning even more clear: if there is a universal loss of belief in money, then money will disappear.

This is different from the causal relationship you've described. It wouldn't be 100% accurate to translate the stimulus to say that that a universal loss of belief could make money disappear, because the stimulus tells us that the loss of belief is sufficient to make money disappear. So, the prephrase should say will make, instead of could make.

Once you recognize that "all that is needed" indicates a conditional statement, the rest of the answer explanations in this thread should make a lot more sense. Please let us know if you have any more questions!

[rjulien91]

This makes zero sense. Does even if have a special role in conditional reasoning.

I was trying to connect the premise and conclusion:

No belief --> disappear --> does not exist;
CP: exist --> does not disappear --> belief

No belief --> does not exist or Exist --> belief;

However I don't see how A falls into the above.

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion. The correct answer choice is (A)

The editorialist's conclusion is that money does not really exist. His evidence for this conclusion is the observation that money would disappear if no one believed in anymore. The example of money disappearing everyday because of fluctuations of financial markets establishes that money can indeed disappear:

• Premise: No Belief in $ → $ Disappears
  
  (Loss of belief in money is sufficient to make it disappear)
  
  Premise: $ Disappears
  
  Conclusion: $ Does Not Exist
  
  (Money does not really exist)

To justify this conclusion, you need to connect the premises to the conclusion:

• Justify Formula: $ Disappears → $ Does Not Exist

Alternatively, you can look for the logical equivalent of this statement, i.e. that if money existed, then it would never disappear. This inference most closely matches the statement given in answer choice (A), which is the correct answer.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. See discussion above. This is the contrapositive of the conditional chain needed to establish the conclusion. Do not be misled by the extreme language of the answer: this is a common feature of correct answers in Justify the Conclusion questions, as their goal is to definitively prove the conclusion.

Answer choice (B): Having mistaken beliefs about a thing is not a necessary condition required by the conclusion of this argument. In fact, the author never mentions mistaken beliefs about money. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): While the author mentions the importance of money in our lives, it is unclear why practical consequences would be required for its existence, or how such a requirement would justify the conclusion. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): This is a Mistaken Reversal of the conditional reasoning upon which the argument depends. Existence requires belief, not the other way around. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (E): This answer choice is easy to eliminate quickly as it fails to address either of the critical elements from the stimulus that are needed to justify the conclusion.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi rjulien91!

I'd be happy to unpack why (A) is correct.

First, the conclusion of this stimulus is in the first sentence: "money does not really exist," or "$ does not exist." Second, the stem indicates that this is a justify the conclusion question. This means that the correct answer choice is more than enough for the conclusion to follow, or they definitively prove the conclusion. Justify questions are in the same helper family of questions as assumption (required for the conclusion to follow) and strengthen (helps at least a small amount) questions.

To break this stimulus apart sentence by sentence, after the conclusion in the first sentence, we're then told, "all that would be needed to make money disappear would be a universal loss of belief in it." This is one premise, which can be diagrammed as:

Belief in $ $ disappears

That is, if there is not belief in money, then money disappears. The contrapositive of this is,

$ disappears Belief in $

In other words, if money has not disappeared, then people must be believing in money.

After this premise, the third sentence states, "We witness this phenomenon on a small scale daily in the rises and falls of financial markets, whose fluctuations are often entirely independent of concrete causes and are the results of mere beliefs of investors." This is providing an example of the prior sentence/premise ("We witness this phenomenon," unpacked in the previous sentence), and it is also an additional premise in that it is saying the sufficient condition from that prior sentence exists, specifically in the case of markets. Markets show how money is dependent on belief--using the administrator's premise, markets show how money disappears ("We witness this [in the] falls of financial markets"). So thus far, we have:

P1: Belief in $ $ disappears
P2: $ disappears
P3: ?
C: $ does not exist

Answer choice (A) states "Anything that exists would continue to exist even if everyone were to stop believing in it." This could be diagrammed as:

X disappears X does not exist

Or phrased using the contrapositive,

X exists X disappears

That is, if X exists, then X hasn't disappeared. We can plug the original rather than the contrapositive in as the third premise:

P1: Belief in $ $ disappears
P2: $ disappears
P3: X disappears X does not exist
C: $ does not exist

Using the X in P3 reflects how that sentence is more than enough for the conclusion to follow ("Anything that exists")--X encompasses money and everything else. This makes it correct for a justify question.