#23 - A spy fails by being caught, and it is normally only

[KelseyWoods]

Hi vbkehs!

While it is important to consider the strength of terms used in the conclusion and premises when answering Parallel Reasoning questions, you have to be careful about focusing on single words out of context and ignoring the overarching structure of the argument. The stimulus says that "the successful spy is never caught", but it also says that "it is normally only through being caught that spies reveal their methods." That part matches the part in answer choice (B) that "unconscious motives are usually impossible to acknowledge." We usually don't learn the methods of successful spies since they are never caught (but we might be able to learn about them from successful spies who decide to willingly expose their methods). It's that idea of only being able to learn a little about spy success--not the why we are only able to learn a little about spy success--that is the key component of this argument. It's not impossible to learn about spy success, we just don't usually learn about it since successful spies are never caught.

I have also included a full explanation for this question above that goes into more depth about how to prephrase it, why answer choice (B) is correct, and why the other answer choices are incorrect, which you may find helpful. Remember that while matching the strength of terms is important, you still need to look at the argument structure as a whole and be careful about whether you are matching the correct premises/conclusions to one another.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[vbkehs]

Thank you! The clarification around the main conclusion is very helpful.

[tetsuya0129]

Hi there,
I picked the correct answer, but, for learning all LSAT tricks, I wanna discuss the reasoning in (A): I am confused about "both success and failure require participation." Semantically, it means success requires participation and failure requires participation. But logically, I could only diagram:

S & F --> P.
~P --> ~S & ~F

Could you kindly explain where did I go wrong?

Thank you very much for your time,
Leon

[Robert Carroll]

Leon,

There are two problems with that diagram. As you said, success requires participation and failure requires participation, So far, this would be ok:

S P
F P

I could say that the combination requires participation, because each requires participation on its own. But each on its own, not just the combination, requires participation. The combination would involve "or":

(S or F) P

This shows that, if you have success, failure, or both, you must participate, which reflects the English statement we paraphrased.

Incidentally, I think success and failure are at least contraries, so we should never have both anyway. But then "S + F" couldn't happen, and "S or F" would mean "S or F, not both". That doesn't really affect anything here.

Your contrapositive is right, but it's the contrapositive of what I just wrote above, not of your conditional. The negation of an "and" is an "or" and vice versa. So if the original sufficient condition is an "or", the necessary condition will be an "and", as you have.

Robert Carroll

[tetsuya0129]

Thank you so much Robert!