WaltGrace83 wrote:I am continuing my quest to principle mastery, trying to understand how these questions work and the trends the occur within them. One thing I have noticed is this: in Identity the Principle Q's - those that "justify," "conform to," etc. - there seems to be a lot of trick answers that give you a conditional in which the sufficient condition is not supported by the argument. By the same token, the correct answers with conditionals will have slightly vaguer language giving us the sufficient condition and thereby granting us the necessary condition we need. While not to say that this is a "trick" to the questions per se as they are still hard, I do believe that this is very intentional on LSAC's part. My question is am I correct in thinking this way? Because this is probably confusing, I'll provide an example of one of the tricker Principle questions I have come across, PT29-S1-Q22 "The government claims that the country's nuclear power plants are entirely safe..."
WaltGrace83, I think you've just picked up on a great classic element of
Principle-support questions (i.e., 'which of the following principles, if valid, would most justify the argument/conclusion'). These questions are really asking for a strengthening answer, but they have a strong tendency to write answer choices in conditional format. And when they do, you're going to be looking for a classic pattern of:
If (something in the premise), then (something in the conclusion)
This is also a classic pattern for
Sufficient Assumptions, and because many Principle-support answers follow the pattern, sometimes people confuse the two question types. However, a Principle-support answer does not absolutely have to be a sufficient assumption - even though it often is one.
So, if you notice that the answer choices for a principle-support fall into conditional language, then you can absolutely eliminate answers solely on the basis that the sufficient condition has not be fulfilled in the argument. You can also eliminate answers because the result of the conditional does not match the conclusion. However, you do need to be careful that you are considering whether the contrapositive of the statement matches!
Consider if we had this argument:
PREMISE:
Jim is wearing a green shirt
CONCLUSION:
Therefore he must be Irish.
Wrong answer
(A):
If people have green eyes, they are Irish.
The has the right result, but the trigger is unfulfilled.
Wrong answer
(B):
If people wear green shirts, they are color-blind.
Right trigger, wrong result.
Correct answer
(C):
If a person is not Irish, they will never wear a green shirt.
This matches. But note that if you were moving too fast, and only looked at the trigger "if a person is not Irish", you might mistakenly think this trigger was never fulfilled in the argument.
Moral of the story: you can eliminate based on triggers not being fulfilled so long as you are considered both the conditional as written and its contrapositive!
You've got some great analysis going on here for the nuclear liability question!
WaltGrace83 wrote: PT29-S1-Q22 "The government claims that the country's nuclear power plants are entirely safe..."
(A) Government claims that X is unsafe → X should be assumed to be unsafe
The government actually claims that X is safe. The sufficient condition isn't satisfied thus this cannot be the correct answer.
Bingo! If you notice the the gov't never said anything was UNSAFE, this is a fast elimination!
WaltGrace83 wrote:
(B) Those who have control over the occurrence of event X stand to benefit from the occurrence of event X → Fear is well-founded
This is a tempting answer because it talks about having a well-founded fear yet nowhere in the argument does it give us this sufficient condition. In fact, the argument implies that there will be some financial disadvantage if the occurrence actually happens.
I actually think this was is pretty tempting for people because they mistake 'limiting liability' for 'stand to benefit financially'. If you thought those were the same thing, you would think the sufficient condition here was fulfilled.
WaltGrace83 wrote:
(C) (Financial security of those responsible for its operation depends on it being safe → Potentially dangerous this is safe) → Eliminating the dependence is not in the best interests of the public
Despite being given the "best interests of the public" part which is clearly out of scope, once again the sufficient condition is not supported. We have no reference to dependence on something being safe
You're totally right that the sufficient condition is not fulfilled here. As a strategic point, I think it's a little easier to quickly see how the result is mismatched ("best interests of public"). The sufficient condition here is a little confusing.
WaltGrace83 wrote:
(E) Real financial threat exists → Govt. action to limit that threat is justified.
Okay this one is just a premise booster. We are given this from the argument "...justified by the need to protect the nuclear industry from the threat of bankruptcy."
I actually wouldn't call this a premise booster. It would boost the government's contention that their action is *justified*, but the author doesn't much care whether their action is justified or not. We know the government thinks it is, but so what?
Probably the easiest thing to see is that ' action justified' doesn't match with the conclusion we want ('fear well founded'). It's a bit more confusing to see this, but the trigger actually isn't fulfilled either - the premises don't give us that there is a real financial threat to a major industry. If you look closely, the argument is
assuming there must be a real financial threat, not stating it as fact!
So, none of the four incorrect answers has a sufficient condition that is actually fulfilled! However, I do think it's more efficient to eliminate (C) and (E) on the basis of their results not matching the conclusion.
WaltGrace83 wrote:
Now if we look at what (D) does, it fits this "mold" so to speak.
Acts to prevent situation X → Real danger that situation X will arise
We know that the govt. has acted to prevent the situation, so the sufficient condition is satisfied. Thus, there is a real danger that the situation will arise! Ultimately, this means that the fear is in fact well-founded
Exactly!
Now, this is often how
Principle-support questions work (but not always!!).
Principle-example ("which of the following most closely conforms to the principle above"), often work in a roughly similar, if somewhat backwards way. If the principle is given to you in conditional language, you can eliminate any answer choice that doesn't trip the conditional's trigger (or it's contrapositive).
You're working through some really interesting stuff! Keep it up, and let me know if you have additional questions about this!
All of you are welcome to leave questions here, as I check this thread regularly. Feel free to ask questions about the LSAT in general, work out specific LSAT questions, ask for study advice, or ask questions about our books. Or anything else LSAT!
