Q20 - One should not play a

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Principle-Example (the principle above most justifies which answer)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Principle: If a practical joke shows contempt for the recipient or if you BELIEVE the joke might bring significant harm to the recipient, then you shouldn't play the practical joke.

Answer Anticipation:
If we were trying to dumb this down a little to diagram on our page, maybe something like
"shows contempt for recip or believe harm recip --> ~joke"

The one shortcut we get to use on many Principle questions is the "you can only conclude what's on the RIGHT side of the arrow" shortcut. The rule we were given allows us to prove that you SHOULDN'T play a joke. We have no way to conclude that anyone SHOULD play a joke.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Tempting, but "I should have realized" doesn't trigger the idea of "I believed it would bring you significant harm".

(B) There is no way for us to use this rule to conclude "it would NOT be wrong to play the joke".

(C) Yes! Because this is first person, saying "it could easily bring you significant harm" can trigger the idea that the joker "believes it might bring significant harm".

(D) Tempting, but "I thought it would show contempt for someone" doesn't trigger "the joke shows contempt for the recipient". What if the 'someone' it would show contempt for wasn't the 'recepient of the joke'?

(E) Can't trigger "I believed it would bring harm" with "someone was harmed". The rule is about the joker's BELIEF, not the actual consequences.

Takeaway/Pattern: When a rule has the form "if X or Y, then Z", we only need to trigger one of its conditions to reach the conclusion.

#officialexplanation

[irini101]

I narrow down to C and D but neither seems complete correct?

I diagram the stimulus as follows and thought it is another regualr principle question with conditional reasoning:

show contempt / believe would harm --> ~joke
contrapositive:
joke--> ~show contempt + ~believe would harm

(C): ~show contempt + easily harm --> ~joke
I think there's a scope shift betwween "believe would harm" and "could easily harm", therefore I cross off C.

(D): ~believe would harm + believe contempt --> ~joke
I think there's a scope shift again between "show contempt" and "believe contempt", therefore I also cross off D, leaving A, B, E with more obvious flaws.

During preptest after crossing off all five choices I seriously doubted wasthere anything I had missed then I went back the stimulus reread again and again, lost a lot of time. Now I redo it again and am still confused by the scope shifts in C and D, so how come C is correct?

Please point out flaws or anything I have missed above! Thanks a lot!

[ohthatpatrick]

Hey, Irini.

Most of what you typed was spot on.

Your translation of D, though, was
(D): ~believe would harm + believe contempt --> ~joke
I think there's a scope shift again between "show contempt" and "believe contempt", therefore I also cross off D

I'm not sure where you got "believe contempt" from (D). It says "show contempt" in (D). I guess you got "believe" from the phrase "I think that it would show contempt".

I don't see the "I think" part of that as a problem.

Since the principle is trying to preempt someone from playing a practical joke, both of the criteria are forward-looking judgments done by the joker before he/she plays the joke (i.e. will it harm that person? will it show contempt for that person?)

Even though "if it shows contempt" isn't presented as subjectively as "if one believes it will cause significant harm", I think the idea of "it showing contempt" is a subjective one. Who will judge whether the joke shows contempt or not? The joker or the recipient of the practical joke? Since following the principle would involve the practical joke never being played, I think we have to go off the joker's judgment of whether the joke shows contempt.

So, wait, didn't I just talk myself into (D) being the correct answer?

Before you read on, see if you can find the more crucial shift in terminology that makes (D) fail to satisfy the "show contempt" condition.

===

You said that in (C) we have a scope shift between "believe could harm" and "easily harm". Ask yourself this: does the speaker, in answer choice (C), believe that the joke could cause significant harm? Yes. If he's saying that the joke "could easily bring you significant harm", then he believes the joke could cause significant harm.

They're not using the word "belief" here; instead, we are just hearing a person explain his belief. (Naturally, the test writers are attempting to disguise the correct answer, by hiding the exact wording they used in the original principle. That's what makes this a #20).

Okay. Back to (D) So the shift we really care about is "show contempt for that person" vs. "show contempt for someone".

The danger with these types of questions is that when we symbolize the original rule, we normally do so with quick abbreviations or shorthand. Often, that's good enough to get rid of most of the wrong answers. Sometimes, though, you'll get caught with a couple tempting options and really need to re-read the original wording to determine what subtlety was lost in the shorthand way of writing the conditions.

Overall, we can't afford to be TOO picky on these. The question stem just says that the provided principle "most helps to justify" one of these answers, not that it "proves it exactly".

One scope shift you didn't mention is that the principle says "you should not play a practical joke" and the answers we're considering say "it would have been wrong to play a practical joke".

I'm guessing that you asked yourself whether those were interchangeable ideas and correctly judged that they are close enough to work.

Good analysis, overall!

[robowarren]

Hi,

Is E wrong because they already played the prank, and the principle is about looking into future?

[ohthatpatrick]

I wouldn't knock out (E) due to the past tense nature of it. The principle is stated in the present tense, but presumably we could adapt it to judging events in the past.

If I believed a certain practical joke was going to show contempt for Bob and might even harm Bob, but I still played the joke on Bob anyway, we should be able to conclude from this principle that "I should not have played the joke".

One issue with (E), like (D) and (A), is that it refers to "someone being harmed", but the principle was specific about "harm being brought to the person on whom the joke was played". We don't know in (E) whether the person harmed was the recipient of the joke or not.

The other issue is that the principle was not concerned with whether the recipient of the joke was or wasn't harmed. The principle cared about whether the joker believed or didn't believe that the joke may bring harm to the recipient. (E) doesn't address whether the joker believed that harm would result or not.

Hope this clarifies.

[Acing LSAT]

What is wrong with (B)????

I knocked off (A) (D) and (E) because of "someone"

I picked (C) because it is the most straightforward representation of the rule but I am unsure what is wrong with (B).


If she "has no reason to think it would harm anyone" then she does not think it will harm the one the joke is being played on

and

and it "shows no contempt for (that person)" either,

so we have our two conditions,

hence it is not wrong.

that is the contrapositve of the principle.

So why is it wrong?

[fmuirhea]

Acing LSAT,
(B) is actually the mistaken reversal of the contrapositive. Here's the original conditional and its contrapositive:

shows contempt for person / believes bring harm --> ~play
play --> ~show contempt for person & ~ believe bring harm

And here's what (B) says:

~show contempt for person & ~believe bring harm --> play

Terms on the right side of any conditional are the necessary components; they're the bare minimum that must be met to satisfy the left/sufficient side. Their being met does not, however, guarantee the left side. Perhaps there are other factors that must be met in addition - that is to say, perhaps our right-side list is not exhaustive. Think of this analogy:

write official LSAT --> government ID & #2 pencil

To write an official LSAT, you need at least a valid form of government-issued ID as well as a #2 pencil (HB for the Canadian folks). But, does everyone in the world who has a pencil and a form of ID write the LSAT? Of course not - there are several other requirements to meet, like actually registering and showing up.

However, violating just one requirement is enough to deny the left side - hence why "&" changes to "/" when negated:

~government ID / ~#2 pencil --> ~write official LSAT

This should sound familiar: if you show up without ID, the proctors will not allow you to write the test, regardless of your pencil status. The analogous flaw to (B) would be: I have a pencil and my ID, so I can write the LSAT! This is trying to prove

government ID & #2 pencil --> write official LSAT

which is not the relationship given to us in either the original conditional or its contrapositive. (Again, you also need to register, have a ticket, attach a photo to that ticket, leave all prohibited items at home, etc.)

This is all a roundabout way of saying that while "~show contempt" and "~believe harm" are necessary components of any practical joke that can be played, they are not indicated as enough in themselves to guarantee that such a joke should be played. Perhaps there are additional requirements, like that joke being within the commonly prescribed bounds of good taste, or being played only on people with whom the joker is close.

The most we can conclude from the evidence in (B) (~show contempt & ~believe harm) is that one might be able to play the joke, just as someone who had both a pencil and his ID could only properly conclude that he might be able to write the LSAT.

Follow the arrows until there are none left to follow, and don't try to go backwards.

[RodrigoA220]

Hey, Irini.

Most of what you typed was spot on.

Your translation of D, though, was
(D): ~believe would harm + believe contempt --> ~joke
I think there's a scope shift again between "show contempt" and "believe contempt", therefore I also cross off D

I'm not sure where you got "believe contempt" from (D). It says "show contempt" in (D). I guess you got "believe" from the phrase "I think that it would show contempt".

I don't see the "I think" part of that as a problem.

Since the principle is trying to preempt someone from playing a practical joke, both of the criteria are forward-looking judgments done by the joker before he/she plays the joke (i.e. will it harm that person? will it show contempt for that person?)

Even though "if it shows contempt" isn't presented as subjectively as "if one believes it will cause significant harm", I think the idea of "it showing contempt" is a subjective one. Who will judge whether the joke shows contempt or not? The joker or the recipient of the practical joke? Since following the principle would involve the practical joke never being played, I think we have to go off the joker's judgment of whether the joke shows contempt.

So, wait, didn't I just talk myself into (D) being the correct answer?

Before you read on, see if you can find the more crucial shift in terminology that makes (D) fail to satisfy the "show contempt" condition.

===

You said that in (C) we have a scope shift between "believe could harm" and "easily harm". Ask yourself this: does the speaker, in answer choice (C), believe that the joke could cause significant harm? Yes. If he's saying that the joke "could easily bring you significant harm", then he believes the joke could cause significant harm.

They're not using the word "belief" here; instead, we are just hearing a person explain his belief. (Naturally, the test writers are attempting to disguise the correct answer, by hiding the exact wording they used in the original principle. That's what makes this a #20).

Okay. Back to (D) So the shift we really care about is "show contempt for that person" vs. "show contempt for someone".

The danger with these types of questions is that when we symbolize the original rule, we normally do so with quick abbreviations or shorthand. Often, that's good enough to get rid of most of the wrong answers. Sometimes, though, you'll get caught with a couple tempting options and really need to re-read the original wording to determine what subtlety was lost in the shorthand way of writing the conditions.

Overall, we can't afford to be TOO picky on these. The question stem just says that the provided principle "most helps to justify" one of these answers, not that it "proves it exactly".

One scope shift you didn't mention is that the principle says "you should not play a practical joke" and the answers we're considering say "it would have been wrong to play a practical joke".

I'm guessing that you asked yourself whether those were interchangeable ideas and correctly judged that they are close enough to work.

Good analysis, overall!

I caught the scope shift of 'wrong' and 'should not' and it really threw me off for this question. I ended up getting it wrong under timed conditions and in my review.

Wondering - does the LSAT always (or almost always) equate wrong with should not? I noticed a lot of principle questions have to do with either one or the other, and want to be clear on it.

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice hedging of your wording ("almost always"). It warms an LSAT teacher's heart.

Yes, LSAT seems to consider all these roughly equivalent
"should not" = "it would be bad to" = "it would be wrong to" = "it would be unjustified"

There's a term for this stuff: 'normative'.

Norms = standards of good / bad .... right / wrong ..... ought to / ought not to .... should / shouldn't

And in general, on Principle-Support questions, the answers come in two styles:

MAIN STYLE
a conditional that is essentially structured
"if stuff we said in the premise is applicable --> then the judgment in the conclusion is warranted"

ALTERNATIVE STYLE
a 'rule of thumb' answer that will be more like
"we should base our conclusion decision on the sort of stuff being talked about in the premise"