#10 - Every political philosopher of the early twentieth

[alexisgorfine@gmail.com]

Hi,

Being that the set up is :

socialist or communist --> influenced --> X totalitarian

totalitarian--> X socialist and X communist

I'm confused why we can say that no philosopher was totalitarian. All this says is that if you are totalitarian you aren't a socialist or communist. Doesn't this set up still leave other groups of philosophers who are other than socialist and communist?

Thanks for your help!

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Alexis,

If you haven't already, check page 3 of the discussion in this thread--there are several posts there discussing how (A) is referencing "socialist political philosopher," not every philosopher, as well as how easy it is to miss that point!

Thanks!

[kupwarriors9]

SOS how come you'd diagram it as:
one influenced by Rosa Luxemburg --> advocated totalitarian state

Is it because of the 'no one' trigger for conditional reasoning? What is the significance of no one. Is it similar to unless, without, etc.?

[Robert Carroll]

kup,

"None" is discussed at this post: viewtopic.php?p=18458#p18458

Robert Carroll

[bhaanvi@gmail.com]

Hello, im confused with the diagramming of option B. Could you diagram it and tell me why exactly its wrong?

[evelineliu]

Hi Bhaanvi,

For (B), although no early 20th century political philosopher influenced by Rosa Luxemberg advocated a totalitarian state, that does not mean that ONLY those philosophers influenced by her failed to advocate for a totalitarian state. Many others have done so.

Hope that helps,
Eveline

[alexis.la]

Hi power-score. I just wanted to share that as I'm studying more I am recognizing patterns and prephasing accordingly. The conditional chain in this stimulus is obvious, and the textbook said, when there is conditional linkage expect to be tested on it, or the contrapositive of it.
Sure enough, [A] tests our ability to recognize the PSC --> RL --> (NOT) TS chain. It made me feel good to move fast on this question. What other sort of 'hacks' or patterns are there that I can keep in mind for LR? I can remember the ones the textbook gave, but I'm not good at making my own observations.

[Robert Carroll]

alexis,

Any general patterns of reasoning, good or bad, are going to be helpful to keep in mind. So Causal Reasoning is a big topic, as are Conditionals and Formal Logic. Numbers are Percentages come up often, so it's good to know how numbers can be used and misused. Flaw in the Reasoning questions typically involve bad patterns of reasoning that have been on the test dozens of times before, so each Flaw question gives you a stimulus with bad reasoning that will probably be seen again on the test. It's important to note that almost all of what we talk about throughout the course involves patterns, not just one-off aspects of unique stimuli. Little in Logical Reasoning is unique!

Robert Carroll

[olenka.ballena@macaulay.cuny.edu]

"No one who was influenced by Rosa Luxemburg advocated a totalitarian state." means that the groups are mutually exclusive. It's like if I said "No dogs are cats." The groups are mutually exclusive. You can't be both!

We can diagram that as:
influenced by RL advocate of totalitarian state

Hi,

I had a similar question as the user before. I negated influenced by Rosa Luxemburg and made that my sufficient condition and then made" advocate of totalitarian state" as the necessary condition. (negation of influenced by RL --> advocate of TS). I thought "people who" were typically indicators of sufficient conditions, and when I saw "no one who..." I made that the sufficient condition. I'm just curious as to how to avoid this because if I had diagrammed this differently, I could've arrived at the right answer. In other words, because I got the second part of the diagram wrong, I couldn't link the first diagram (which I made correctly) to the second one since the contrapositive of (negation of influenced by RL --> advocate of TS) is (not advocate of TA --> influenced by RL).

[Adam Tyson]

Words of absolute negation like "no," none," and "never" create conditional relationships in which the sufficient condition is positive and the necessary condition is negative. When I say "no student in the class owned a car," I am saying that if someone is a student in the class, they do not own a car, and if someone owns a car, they are not a student in the class. If you are one thing, you are not the other thing; if you are in one of these groups, you are not in the other group.

That can get trickier when one of the conditions is already negated, like this one: "none of the people without a sponsor were allowed to enter the building." Here, the two "groups" are "people without a sponsor" (which is already in a negative form) and "people allowed to enter the building." Following the same rules as above, if you are in one of those groups, you cannot be in the other group. So, if you are someone without a sponsor, you cannot enter the building; if you can enter the building you are not without a sponsor, which would be the same as saying that you have a sponsor.

The short answer here is that those words of negation will negate the necessary condition in the relationship, not the sufficient condition. If you are one thing, you are not the other thing. So if you are influenced by Rosa, you do not advocate a totalitarian state. Memorize that conditional structure and you'll get it right every time!