#16 - Fremont: Simpson is not a viable candidate for chief

[amit3]

I am having a tough time understanding how you got the suff and nec conditions from "Simpson is not a viable candidate for chief executive of Pod Oil because he has no background in the oil industry". Is "because" a sufficient indicator in this situation?

[Paul Marsh]

Hi amit! I see why in this particular instance you might think of "because" as a sufficient condition indicator. But I would caution against thinking about "because" (or its close synonyms on the LSAT: "since" or "for") that way. Those are all certainly "premise" indicators, and often they can indicate a Causal relationship, but they're not enough to always necessarily create a conditional relationship. Take my Beatles inspired example: "I'm crying because the sky is blue". It wouldn't really be accurate to diagram that as: Sky is blue I cry. Why? Well we don't know that every time the sky is blue I cry. In other words "because" isn't itself "sufficient" (sorry!) to create a sufficient/necessary relationship .

So in Fremont's statement there really isn't a sufficient or necessary indicator. In fact, there isn't really one in this whole stimulus; the best one I can point to would be the word "guarantee" in Galindo's second sentence. "Guarantee" can create a sufficient condition (for example: "A degree guarantees happiness". Degree happiness.) Here, since Galindo is saying that it's NOT a guarantee, that means he's saying a background in the oil industry is NOT a sufficient condition for success. But Fremont wasn't saying that an oil background always guarantees success. Instead, Fremont seemed to be suggesting that it's something that's necessary, not sufficient, for success. So that's why (C) is our answer.

This question is a good example of why our table of Sufficient/Necessary indicators is not the end all be all of conditionals. Those words are a great starting point, but they don't cover every conditional. We want to be comfortable recognizing whenever an argument creates a sufficient/necessary relationship even without using one of those indicators.

Hope that helps!

[Tami Taylor]

Hi,

I see why (C) is correct, but I'm having trouble understanding why (E) wrong. Isn't (E) happening in the stimulus? Or is the example of Pod Oil's former CEO relevant enough to make the broad generalization about someone's background in oi as an indicator of success?

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

I would not call the conclusion here a broad generalization, Tami. The author is just saying that one thing is not, by itself, sufficient for another thing. If a single instance can be shown where the first thing does not require the second, that's enough, and the fact that it is only one instance is not a problem. For an answer like E to be correct, we would need the argument to say something like "the last chief had an oil industry background, and he did a bad job, therefore anyone with that background would be bad at the job."

[BMM2021]

Hi,

Totally get why C is correct. Based on the wording of the question, I made the mistake of believing that we were only to analyze Galindo's argument as it exists outside of Fremont's (i.e. I thought Fremont's argument was there for distraction).

In turn, I had difficulty finding the error in Galindo's argument, since he's saying oil background isn't sufficient for success, then following that claim up with an example in which oil industry experience didn't result in success. Obviously, the flaw lies in Galindo's interpretation of Fremont's argument, as has been pointed out above. Since the question stem doesn't specify that the flaw is found in the relationship between the two arguments (not that it has to, either), I just wanted to know if this is usually the case with these sort of flaw questions involving multiple speakers; that the flaw has something to do with how the respondent argues in context of the first argument?

[Adam Tyson]

I'll give you the old standby here, BMM: "it depends."

Sometimes the question stem will ask about the flaw in the response, or will otherwise ask why one person's position is an inadequate counter to the what the other person said. In those cases you have to look at what the other person said to see why the response is inadequate. Other times, the question will not be so clear, but the way the response is written requires you to look at the first speaker. Here, since the second person is starting off with "I disagree," you have to see what they are claiming to disagree with in order to understand why their argument is flawed.

But then sometimes you'll get a flaw question about a two-speaker stimulus that requires no reference at all to what the other person said. The author might make a bad causal claim, or a source argument, or some other obvious flaw that would be clear whether you read what the other speaker said or not.

I think the first type is more common, but I don't have any data to support that. My gut tells me that when we are faced with two speakers and asked about what flaw the second person made, it's usually going to be about how they misunderstood what the first person said.

You can and should start your analysis before you ever get to the question just by noticing what each speaker said and how one or the other or both of them may have committed logical flaws. If you are already hunting for those problems actively, while reading the stimulus, you'll be more likely to spot it and prephrase it when asked!