For the first two sentences of the stimulus, I just wanted to clarify the conditional reasoning involved. Would this be a bi-conditional, then? (If I am taking the wrong approach, please correct me)
Pursue Prisoner → Leave Station
Leave Station → Pursue Prisoner
I chose (D) correctly, but had a hard time eliminating (E), if they both left their stations, it CANNOT BE TRUE that Chelas had violated these rules and Stelma had not. How would this be acceptable as COULD BE TRUE? (I guess I got the answer correctly, but I didn’t understand the stimulus properly which means I probably got lucky)
LSAT Forum
2 postsPage 1 of 1
-
- ohthatpatrick
-
Thanks Received: 3808
-
Atticus Finch
- Posts: 4661
- Joined: April 01st, 2011
- This post thanked 1 time.
Re: Q18
The first two sentences don't give us a bi-conditional, because they deal with 3 different topics.
Sentence 1:
If a prisoner escapes --> they must pursue
Sentence 2:
If they aren't pursuing --> they must wait for their replacements before leaving
Those also don't chain together, although we could say:
If they aren't pursuing -> Prisoner HASN'T escaped and Must Wait 4 replacements B4 leaving
On Must Be False questions, the correct answer will contradict what we were told (or what we can infer from what we were told).
The incorrect answers are not legal inferences, but they don't contradict anything.
From the last sentence, we can infer that
CHELAS (who violated the rules) ... either failed to pursue a prisoner or left the station before the replacements arrived (or both)
STELMA (who obeyed the rules) ... pursued any prisoner that escaped and otherwise did not leave the station before replacements arrived.
We need an answer that contradicts one of these inferences:
(A) This is possible. Whether they left in violation or obedience of the rules ... they had time to both be back by 9pm.
(B) This is possible (STELMA may have been obediently chasing a prisoner while CHELAS disobediently stayed behind)
(C) This is possible (CHELAS may have disobediently left the station, not for the sake of chasing a prisoner, while STELMA obediently stayed)
(D) This is impossible. STELMA pursued any prisoner that escaped, so if a prisoner escaped at 7pm, STELMA would have left immediately in pursuit.
(E) This is possible. STELMA could have obediently left to pursue the prisoner, and CHELAS could have disobediently left at some other time when they weren't in pursuit of a prisoner.
Funky question! Hope this helps.
Sentence 1:
If a prisoner escapes --> they must pursue
Sentence 2:
If they aren't pursuing --> they must wait for their replacements before leaving
Those also don't chain together, although we could say:
If they aren't pursuing -> Prisoner HASN'T escaped and Must Wait 4 replacements B4 leaving
On Must Be False questions, the correct answer will contradict what we were told (or what we can infer from what we were told).
The incorrect answers are not legal inferences, but they don't contradict anything.
From the last sentence, we can infer that
CHELAS (who violated the rules) ... either failed to pursue a prisoner or left the station before the replacements arrived (or both)
STELMA (who obeyed the rules) ... pursued any prisoner that escaped and otherwise did not leave the station before replacements arrived.
We need an answer that contradicts one of these inferences:
(A) This is possible. Whether they left in violation or obedience of the rules ... they had time to both be back by 9pm.
(B) This is possible (STELMA may have been obediently chasing a prisoner while CHELAS disobediently stayed behind)
(C) This is possible (CHELAS may have disobediently left the station, not for the sake of chasing a prisoner, while STELMA obediently stayed)
(D) This is impossible. STELMA pursued any prisoner that escaped, so if a prisoner escaped at 7pm, STELMA would have left immediately in pursuit.
(E) This is possible. STELMA could have obediently left to pursue the prisoner, and CHELAS could have disobediently left at some other time when they weren't in pursuit of a prisoner.
Funky question! Hope this helps.
2 posts Page 1 of 1