PT50, S4, P10 - Only people who are willing to compromise

[dj_grey]

I know there is a "diagram" for this one can someone help:

Here is what i have:
People willing to compromise = Compromise
1) Compromise--> Mediation
2) ~Mediation --> ~Compromise
3) SureCorrectposition --> Litigation
4) ~Litigation --> ~SureCorrectposition
5) ConflictbasedIdeology --> ~Compromise
6) Compromise --> ~ConflictbasedIdeology

Ok, so from my understanding of logic (which is minimal) you can only go from left to right....cant go backwards.........not in the rules so to speak.

From my above diagram i dont see a possible answer in any of the ones listed. So, this obviously means either my diagram is wrong or i am approaching the problem wrong.

CAn someone help?

[bradleygirard]

This was indeed a tough one. As for your diagram, both 1 & 3 seem to me to be mistaken reversals.
1. states that if you are willing to compromise then you must go to mediation, when indeed what it says is that if you undergo mediation, it is a necessary condition that you are willing to compromise. (Try and think of ways to evaluate this relationship, hypotheticals help me out i.e. I consider myself someone who is willing to compromise, but I have no problems at the moment, why is it necessary to undergo mediation? as opposed to what the statement says about someone who is willing to undergo mediation.)
So what we then get makes the problem follow rather easily;

1.mediation-->compromise
2.~compromise-->~mediation
3.litigation-->surecorrectposition
4. ~surecorrectposition-->~litigation
5.ideology-->~compromise
6. compromise-->~ideology
A combination of #5 and #2 gets us to E, the correct answer. This one is made tougher by the addition of #3 and #4 which end up being unnecessary and muck the whole thing up. Answer D seems there to get those folks who thought they needed those unnecessary 3 and 4, and played on the fact that people might mistake logically the statements about being sure that one is correct, and ideology. Hope this helps.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

This is a tricky question!

Bradley's explanation of the logical orientation issues is correct, and I think the analogy he used is an absolutely terrific way to think about the "only" issue (always beware of the LSAT test-writer's use of the word "only"!).

I'd like to add just a little bit more about
A) One of the reasons I think this issue is so difficult
B) One way to think about tough conditionals
C) A different way, perhaps, to think about this type of problem

A)

"Only people who are willing to compromise should undergo mediation to resolve their conflicts."

I think one thing that really makes it tough to interpret a statement like this correctly, in a conditional sense, is the implied sense of a reason for something:

Person X is willing to go to mediation because he is willing to compromise.

For most arguments, and most conclusions, it's helpful to think about the order of that reasoning -- X causes Y --

BUT

If you are using formal conditional logic, you must remember -- conditional logic is NOT interchangeable with causation.

X -- > Y is not the same thing as X causes Y (though there can certain be overlap between those ideas).

Which leads me to...

B) One way to think about challenging conditional statements is in terms of what MUST BE TRUE and what COULD BE TRUE.

In this particular problem, since only people who are willing to compromise should undergo mediation...

If you undergo mediation, it MUST BE TRUE that you were willing to compromise.

If you are willing to compromise, well, maybe you will go to mediation.

Your conditional statement should represent the inference that MUST BE TRUE.

M --> C.

Having said all that, keep in mind that you don't always have to solve problems like this using conditional logic.

C)

This is an inference question, and, for inference questions, you will not be able to predict the right answer, ever. So, you should feel fine about moving on to the answer choices without a "map" of the argument, and you shouldn't feel like you'll be lost without one.

Here's another way that the problem can be solved, in real time.

1) Read the argument quickly --

Maybe you take away just an understanding of structure: there are a few characteristics (willing to compromise, etc) that are related to one another in a series of relationships.

2) Spend the majority of your time eliminating answer choices.

Your mindset for thinking about inference answers should NOT be "What is closest to what I expected" but rather "This answer can't be proven by the text!" Let's think about the incorrect answers in that way --

A) is about people who do not undergo mediation. You look up at the argument and the only time mediation is mentioned, it gives you a characteristic of those who do undergo mediation. You realize we don't know anything about those who don't. We can't prove this conclusion!

B) is about people whose conflicts are not based on ideology. The argument tells us information about people whose conflicts are about ideology. We can't prove this conclusion.

C) Conflicts based on ideology and being sure of a position being correct are mentioned in the argument, but can these ideas be connected in some way? Nope. The parts they are each connected to don't connect to one another in any way.

D) Can we connect being sure to mediation in any way? Nope -- being sure is only tied to litigation, and litigation isn't connected to anything else.

E) Can we say those who base on ideology shouldn't undergo mediation? Let's work through the reasoning --

We know that those who base on ideology are unwilling to compromise.

We also know that only those who are willing to compromise should go to mediation.

Therefore, we can see that those who base on ideology should not go to mediation!

Certainly, this second method is far less organized and therefore not as easy to repeat -- the specific reasoning we used to eliminate particular answers would be invalid if the wording of the original argument was just subtly different -- but you may feel more comfortable making such language/meaning distinctions rather than using conditional logic.

Again, it's just a different way of doing the thinking required for the problem.

I think there are pro's and con's to both methods and I'm sure you've figured out already which one feels more natural for you - I hope seeing them both was helpful!