Q18 - If there are any inspired

[sarahhaque]

I'm having difficulty creating a logic chain for this inference question.

The second sentence, "But there will NOT be a good show UNLESS there are sophisticated listeners in the audience", is throwing me off. I'm getting confused in trying to understand which would be considered the necessary condition or the sufficient condition.

Would this be correct logic chain?

Inspired performances -> Good show -> Sophisticated listeners -> understand musical roots

And then, I encounter the same confusion in answer choice D) "The audience will be treated to a good show UNLESS there are people in the audience you who do NOT understand their musical roots."

Would it be, Good show -> understand musical roots ?

Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Your setup of the stimulus is perfect.

There are three conditional relationships from the stimulus.

1. IMP --> GS
2. GS --> SL
3. SL --> UMR

You can use the transitive property and combine these statements to yield many different possible inferences

1 + 2 = IMP --> SL
2 + 3 = GS --> UMR
1 + 2 + 3 = IMP --> UMR

or you could have the contrapositive of any of these statements.

(A) ~SL --> ~IMP is the correct answer and is the contrapositive of the inference from the first two statements.
(B) ~GS --> ~UMR is the negation of the inference of the second and third statements.
(C) UMR --> IMP is the reversal of the inference of all three statements.
(D) ~GS --> ~UMR is the negation of the inference of the second and third statement.
(E) SL --> IMP is the reversal of the first statement.

For statements involving "unless"

_______ , unless ________.

What comes after unless is the necessary condition. Everything else gets negated and thrown into the sufficient condition.

Does this help clear things up!

[dcdharmadasa]

Quick Question about (A)

The reason i skipped over it was because I saw the first "no" in the first part of the conditional and decided to negate necessary.

That gives us the conditional SL --> IP

If we just write the statement as is its /SL --> /IP


I dont think what I did was wrong - but then again, it left me with an incorrect conditional statement.

Please let me know, thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

What you did IS technically wrong, although I certainly see where it came from.

When we see statements of the form
No A's are B's
we symbolize it as
A --> ~B

So you were applying that formula correctly upon seeing "no".
But you seemed to pass right by "if", which is the conditional trigger here.

No A's are B's is a definitive statement about the category of A and the category of B having no overlap.

No lions are Senators.

But when I say
"If there are no lions in the Capitol, then Congress can go back inside."

I'm not making a statement about the category of LIONS. Instead, I'm talking about a scenario in which the Capitol building is completely lion-free.

Similarly, (A) is talking about a scenario in which the audience has no sophisticated listeners.

It's making a claim that IF we have no sophisticated listeners, THEN something happens.

Your translation of (A) made it say that IF we DO have sophisticated listeners, THEN something happens.

The author of (A) would say, "I didn't say that! I only said that LACKING sophisticated listeners would trigger something, not that HAVING them would trigger something."

Anyway, the short and sweet of it is simply that "If" / "Then" in (A) is what's creating a conditional, and your translation of (A) was an illegal negation of that conditional.

In order for the No A's are B's formula to apply, you need a verb in between them, not a comma.

No children's books fascinate intellectuals.
Children's book --> ~(fascinate intellectuals)

Hope this helps.