Q15 - Words should be abandoned?

[canylaw]

I am having a hard time understanding this questions.The word useful in the ACs is confusing.
Can someone pls help.

[timmydoeslsat]

Ashley states that certain words do not refer to anything

Joshua then says, "I agree. And since such words are meaningless, they should be abandoned."

Did you see how Joshua threw out the comment about meaningless? That came out of nowhere! Ashley did not state that they were meaningless, just that they did not refer to anything!

Joshua's logic is this:

~ Refer ---> ~ Meaning

Contrapositive:

Meaning ---> Refer

Answer choices:

A) Is the contrapositive of Joshua's logic.

B) ~Useful ---> ~ Meaning. Uses useful instead of refer.

C) Refer ---> Meaning. Invalid double negation of stimulus.

D) ~Useful ---> Should be abandoned. Useful instead of refer.

E) Refer ---> Useful. Do not like useful.

[maryadkins]

Nice explanation!

Key takeaway here is that "useful" isn't a concept that either Ashley or Joshua speaks to. So you were right to be suspicious of it. Stick with what they actually discuss--in this case, whether a word refers to something.

[patrice.antoine]

I narrowed down to choice A and C for this question and initially chose A but thought that the word "only" was too extreme and defaulted to C. Can anyone explain how not to get tied up with the word "meaningful". How does that differentiate from "meaning"? Is the exact opposite of "meaningless", "meaning" and not "meaningful"? So confusing!

[willingham.nicholas]

so are these "identify the disagreement" questions? This was hard to classify

[WaltGrace1983]

so are these "identify the disagreement" questions? This was hard to classify

These identify the disagreement questions, I believe, are really just flaw questions. I kind of take them like Person A is a premise and Person B is a conclusion and see where the logical jump is.

I narrowed down to choice A and C for this question and initially chose A but thought that the word "only" was too extreme and defaulted to C. Can anyone explain how not to get tied up with the word "meaningful". How does that differentiate from "meaning"? Is the exact opposite of "meaningless", "meaning" and not "meaningful"? So confusing!

"Only" is very appropriately extreme here!

The argument says: ~Refer --> ~Meaning

and after we take the contrapositive...

Meaning--> Refer

we have two different conditional statements to work from. In other words, Joshua is equating everything does not refer to something as having no meaning...aka that word that does not refer to anything is meaningless. We could have written it out like this too:

~Refer --> Meaningless
~Meaningless --> Refer

Being not meaningless means have some meaning.

We can eliminate (B) (D) and (E) really quickly for the word "useful." The LSAT is trying to get you to equate having a meaning to being "useful" but that is just too big of a leap. So let's look at (A) and (C)

"Only words that refer to something have meaning"

Meaning --> Refer

"Words that refer to something are meaningful"

Refer --> Meaningful or Refer --> Meaning (if you are meaningful then you have meaning by definition)

(C) is a mistaken reversal. (C) is NOT what Joshua is implying. (A) definitely is.

[ohthatpatrick]

GREAT explanation!

(although there were typos at the end, because you meant get rid of B, D, and E for containing 'useful' ... and the final down to two analysis was between A and C)

Let us know if any questions remain.