Q15 - Sonya: Anyone who lives without

[dan]

15. (D)
Question type: Inference
It is a mistake to believe that the correct answer to an inference question will sum up the main point of the argument, or involve a creative or clever logical deduction. The sole criteria for a correct answer to an inference question is that it must be fairly provable, if the original statement is believed to be true.

Answer choice (D) is correct because it is provable according to the text. According to the argument, everyone whose emotional outlook is untainted must lack constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of life, and everyone who lacks this has a mind clouded by illusion.

The stimulus of this inference question boils down to two statements:

No constant awareness --> clouded mind
Constant awareness --> tainted emotion

Pretty bleak!

We can combine these statements by using the contrapositive of the second one:

Not tainted emotions --> Not constant awareness --> clouded mind

And that's what (D) is based upon.

(A) is out of scope - we're not interested in folks' priorities.

(B) is tempting, however the stimulus doesn't suggest that everyone is in one group or another. There's no reason to believe that some people could have constant awareness while others don't.

(C) is out of scope - self-deception? Tempting if you though a mind clouded by illusion is a case of self-deception. But even if that were true, couldn't there be some folks that have constant awareness and thus none of this illusion/self-deception?

(E) is about what's better? No opinions in the stimulus, no opion in any inference.

[jennifer]

I was really thrown off by the word "Everyone" in answer choice D. I typically am afraid to select such extreme words on inference questions. How does "these people" in the stimulus covert to "Everyone"?

Also when you submit a question now, why is the option to be altered via email once the questions has been answered no longer an option?

[haeaznboiyoung]

I think it's because the passage starts off with "Anyone." I read this argument as if you are aware of the f & p of human life, you are tainted. If you are not aware of the f & p of human life, you are clouded. So this stimulus leaves you with two options, either you're aware or not aware, tainted or clouded. Any person (or anyone) has to be either aware or unaware of something.

[farhadshekib]

This is how I see it.

Sentence 1: Anyone who lives without constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of human life has a mind clouded by illusion.

~ CA of F + P of HL ---> M C I.

CA: constant awareness.
F: Fragility
P: Precariousness
HL: Human life
TEO: Tainted emotional outlook on existence.

MCI: Mind clouded by Illusion.

Sentence 2: Yet those people who are perpetually cognizant of the fragility and precariousness of human life surely taint their emotional outlook on existence.

CA of F + P of HL --> TEO

At this point, we should look for a way to link these two statements - often, this happens by looking for the contrapositive.

So the contrapositive of sentence 1 is:

~MCI --> CA of F + P of HL

Link this to sentence 2:

~MCI --> CA of F + P of HL --> TEO

At this point, I searched the answer choices for something along the lines of: "People who do not have a mind clouded by illusion must have a tainted emotional outlook on existence".

Or ~MCI --> TEO.

I didn't find it... panicked because I thought I was wasting too much time and choose (B) because it mentioned MCI and TEO.

However, I should have remained calm and looked for the contrapositive of this statement. That is: Everyone whose emotional outlook on existence is untainted must have a mind clouded by illusion.

~TEO ---> MCI.

The moral of the story: I am an idiot.

[daniel.g.winter]

The moral of the story: I am an idiot.

Haha that last line made me laugh and smile. I feel the same way about a LOT of questions when I review them. It's not that I didn't understand the question, I just make stupid mistakes while rushing that just leave me bewildered upon review at how I could have chose such a dumb answer. Luckily I got this one right, but not before I totally messed up number 14 before this, a question SO easy that it does not even have a topic posted for it. I feel your pain.

[bbirdwell]

My advice on questions like this is to use as few acronyms as possible. Actually, I rarely use acronyms at all. An actual word or two (or three) is much less confusing.

When your understanding of a text needs a key that includes six different acronyms...

CA: constant awareness.
F: Fragility
P: Precariousness
HL: Human life
TEO: Tainted emotional outlook on existence.

MCI: Mind clouded by Illusion.

... chances are, it can be simplified.

The real obstacle in this problem is equating cognizance with awareness. If we know that these words are reasonably synonymous, things are easier:

NO awareness --> illusion
awareness --> tainted emotion

At this point, we can contrapose the first statement to make the obvious link between the two:
NO illusion --> tainted emotion

This should, in all likelihood, be our answer. If the test-writers are being particularly crafty, the correct answer will be the contrapositive (NO tainted emotion --> illusion).

As you identified, in this case that's exactly what happens.

[jlz1202]

I narrow down to B and D but choose B. I understand why D is correct but I am not sure what does B convey by "either or".

I diagram B(either not teo or not ci) as follows:

teo--> not ci

ci--> not teo

B is flawed because its flow is reversed from stimulus. Could any one point out whether my understanding correct?

[irini101]

15. (D)
Question type: Inference
It is a mistake to believe that the correct answer to an inference question will sum up the main point of the argument, or involve a creative or clever logical deduction. The sole criteria for a correct answer to an inference question is that it must be fairly provable, if the original statement is believed to be true.

Answer choice (D) is correct because it is provable according to the text. According to the argument, everyone whose emotional outlook is untainted must lack constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of life, and everyone who lacks this has a mind clouded by illusion.

(A) is incorrect because of interpretation.
(B) is incorrect because of interpretation.
(C) goes too far beyond the meaning of the text.
(E) goes too far beyond the meaning of the text.

Hi Dan, I still don't understand why B incorrect. Could you explicate "false interpretation" in B?

I am also confused by "either...or..." in B, in this question, should it be "either A or B" (not A-->B, not B-->A) or "either A or B but not both" (A-->not B, B--> not A)??

I really need to figure out the question as it is the only one among dozens of preptest question that I review over 3 times but still get no clue.

Thanks a lot!

[noah]

The stimulus of this inference question boils down to two statements:

No constant awareness --> clouded mind
Constant awareness --> tainted emotion

Pretty bleak!

We can combine these statements by using the contrapositive of the second one:

Not tainted emotions --> Not constant awareness --> clouded mind

And that's what (D) is based upon.

(A) is out of scope - we're not interested in folks' priorities.

(B) is tempting, however the stimulus doesn't suggest that everyone is in one group or another. There's no reason to believe that some people could have constant awareness while others don't.

(C) is out of scope - self-deception? Tempting if you though a mind clouded by illusion is a case of self-deception. But even if that were true, couldn't there be some folks that have constant awareness and thus none of this illusion/self-deception?

(E) is about what's better? No opinions in the stimulus, no opion in any inference.

I hope that clears it up. I think you're focusing on the wrong issue in the stimulus.

[irini101]

But isn't "perpetually cognizant" logically opposite to "without constant awareness" and when two things are logically opposite to each other, they include "all" ?

For instance, good vs. not good, then good + not good = all?

[irenaj]

I think (B) is incorrect because "either A or B" includes three situations: A / B / A+B

Therefore (B) would mean:

~te (-->~aw) or
~ill (--> aw) or
~te + ~ ill (~aw + aw, which is impossible according to the stimulus, I also think that "without constant awareness" is logically opposite to "perptually cognizant of")

Could any one point out whether the explanation is correct and whether "without constant awareness" is logically opposite to "perptually cognizant of" ?

Thanks a lot!

[noah]

Your explanation seems fine (though I've forgotten what all the notations refer to) - nice work!

In my mind, it boils down to this analogous situation:

Some people have all 10 fingers.
Some people don't have all 10 fingers.

OK, sort of gruesome, but clearly it breaks the world into two groups, 10 fingered and not all 10 fingered. Does this mean that either no one has all 10 fingers or no doesn't have 10 fingers?

No, some people can have 10, others can be missing some.

[geverett]

What if you got rid of the "no" in answer choice B. Would it then be right?

[samuelfbaron]

Any suggestions on how to break through the complicated language of questions like this?

Once I read the explanations and placed the conditionals into formal logic, this question was really easy.

What overwhelmed me during timed conditions was the language.

[sumukh09]

Any suggestions on how to break through the complicated language of questions like this?

Once I read the explanations and placed the conditionals into formal logic, this question was really easy.

What overwhelmed me during timed conditions was the language.

If you don't have X then you have Y. But if you have X then you get Z.

You either have X or you don't.

D says if you don't have Z then you have Y. This works perfectly because if you don't have Z then you don't have X as per the contrapositive. And if you don't have X then you have to have Y.

X = constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of human life

Y = mind clouded by illusion

Z = taint emotional outlook on existence

[jewels0602]

What made this question difficult for me was I didn't automatically see the connection between the two sufficient triggers-- I didn't see it was an either/or situation so in the back of my head I had this notion that you could sometimes be aware (one didn't have to be constantly unaware or aware) which made answering this question really difficult.

I simplified the argument by only seeing it in bolded red terms:
a --> b (constant lack of awareness --> illusion)
c --> d (perpetual awareness --> tainted outlook)

so what I learned is that when I 'immediately' abstract the stim, I could lose out on a nuance that actually connects a and c into an either/or occurrence.

Are there other question that do this? I am trying to become sensitized to his type of reasoning because honestly I can see myself missing another question like this

[ohthatpatrick]

I actually consider synonyms to be the lifeblood of LSAT. Obviously, it doesn't apply to Games, but synonyms (i.e. different but equivalent expressions) are how most correct RC answer choices are written.

And when LSAT wants to make a logic link less obvious, instead of repeating the same symbol, they use a synonym.

Given that this is an Inference question, and the whole point of Inference questions is to take multiple claims and combine them, I'm always asking myself, "Where do any of these claims overlap?"

Without overlap, there's no way to synthesize claims.

When an Inference stimulus gives you 4 or 5 claims, they don't ALL have to be combined together. Often, we're being tested on two claims that can be synthesized with a couple other claims thrown in there as filler / distraction.

Since this stimulus has only two claims, you need to have a proactive agenda thinking, "How do these two claims relate to each other? Can they be combined at all?"

If claim 1 was a-->b and claim 2 was c--->d, then there's no way to join the claims at all. All you could do for a correct answer would be to give the contrapositive of claim 1 or the contrapositive of claim 2.

We know Inference questions like to synthesize claims based on Conditional, Causal, or Quantitative wording.

You clearly found the Conditional wording in claim 1 ("anyone") and claim 2 ("surely").

So the typical Inference template in which we get two conditional claims is to see if they chain together.

In order for them to chain, we have to ask ourselves if the same idea (or negation of the idea) is used twice.

In this case, question type awareness gives us reason to try to make two ideas match.

But the broader advice Brian Birdwell offered earlier is really important: don't go symbolic unless / until you find you CAN'T handle organizing the conditional ideas conversationally.

Once we switch into robotic diagramming mode, we tend to shut off our conversational brain. The only question type for which I do that very eagerly is Sufficient Assumption.

A lot of people struggled with the vocab in this stimulus (fragility, precariousness, cognizant), but the topic is extremely relateable, I hope:

We're mortal. Life is fleeting and precious. Every second matters.

The tough symbol matching in this question is "constant awareness" = "perpetually cognizant".

But the freebie is that both claims mention "fragility and precariousness". That clue has to be motivation enough to slow down and see if both claims are actually referencing the same idea. That and the fact that the question type (Inference) sort of demands that we consider whether the two claims have any overlapping information.

As I said, synonym symbol matching is EVERYWHERE on LSAT, but the immediate question this reminded of is this Sufficient Assumption one.
PT52, S1, Q17
Try it first before you dig into the thread:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... -t843.html

[alexyinyang]

After my initial read through, I diagrammed:

Anyone who lives without constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of human life has a mind clouded by illusion as
~CAF and ~PHL ---> MCL

and Yet those people who are perpetually cognizant of the fragility and precariousness of human life surely taint their emotional outlook on existence as
CAF and PHL ---> TEO

This then led me to take the contrapositives of the two statements as
~MCL ---> CAF or PHL
and
~TEO ---> ~CAF or PHL

CAF = Constant awareness of fragility
PHL = Precariousness of human life
MCL = Mind clouded by illusion
TEO = Taint emotional outlook

Which led me to immediately eliminate D thinking that it was a tempting bait answer. Afterwards, I realized that constant awareness of "THE" and perpetually cognizant of "THE" gave it away (the word THE). Does this kind of question show up in any other forms? and are there any particular ways to avoid making this mistake again?

[risa.fayeza]

I got this one right, but I was just wondering about answer choice B. Would it have been correct if it said that you either have a tainted emotional outlook on existence or a mind clouded by illusion?

I think a lot of people are getting confusion because they are interpreting it this way. I feel like this would have to be true because you're either perpetually cognizant or you're not. They're no in between, so you would have to fulfill one of those necessary conditions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[RebekahD410]

I still do not understand how the stimulus uses the word anyone and the answer choice uses "everyone". The way I saw this question was
any one with constant awareness has a clouded mind.
the people with constant awareness have a tainted emotional outlook.
but couldn't there be a third group of people?

I just am not understanding how the LSAT is incredibly careful with words but "anyone" and "everyone" are not synonyms. Is there an inference I was supposed to deduce that this problem was ONLY speaking of 2 groups?