Logical Reasoning

PT139 · S1 · Q12 One should apologize only

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One should apologize only to a person one has wronged, and only for having wronged that person.

Statements

Conditionals

(only = right side)

to person wronged should apologize → and apologizing for wronging

(to X is to Y = X→Y) acknowledge you've sincere apology → acted wrongfully

(unless = Required goes on Right) intend not to repeat sincere apology → wrongful act

(unless = Required goes on Right) acknowledge a wrong sincere accept → and apology vow not to hold a grudge

Evaluate

This feels like a messy pile of facts. There are definitely four conditionals here, which makes a savvy LSAT student think, "I should be trying to chain these?" But one high-level way to assess chain-ability is to just see if there are overlapping ideas.

The first sentence is - whether/not you should apologize - whether/not you wronged a person - whether/not you're apologizing for having wronged the person

Does the second repeat any of those? No. - whether/not sincere apology - whether/not you acted wrongfully

So don't do anything with those yet.

Does the third repeat any of those?

- whether/not sincere apology - whether/not intend to repeat wrongful act

Overlap! So now we might diagram to see whether 2nd and 3rd connect.

2nd: acknowledge

sincere → you acted apology wrong.

3rd: intend not to sincere → repeat that apology wrongful act.

They don't chain, but they allow us to collapse the two together and infer that a sincere apology requires at least two things:

1. acknowledge you sincere → acted wrong apology 2. intend not to repeat that action

Does the 4th sentence have an overlap?

- whether/not apology sincerely accepted - whether/not you acknowledge you were wronged - whether/not you vow not to hold a grudge against wrongdoer

No overlap, so head to the answers.

Goal

We don't have a specific prediction, so we'll just have to consider these answers flexibly, looking out primarily for illegal backwards and opposite moves, since there's so much conditional logic.

12.

The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

  1. If one apologizes and subsequently

    Bad Trigger Match: intent vs. result

    Do we have a rule that lets us derive that you haven't apologized sincerely? Yes, if you either 1. never acknowledged that you acted wrongfully or 2. you don't intend to avoid that wrongful act in the future This answer choice seems to establish #2, but it's only establishing that you did repeat the wrongful act. It doesn't address your intentions.

    23% picked this

  2. One cannot sincerely accept an

    Unsupported Relationship

    Do we have a way to derive that you cannot sincerely accept an apology? Yes, we could either establish that 1. you didn't acknowledge that a wrong had occurred or 2. you didn't vow to avoid holding a grudge against the wrongdoer Neither of those things overlap with the criteria for giving a sincere apology, so there's no way to say that a failure to give a sincere apology prevents the ability to sincerely accept that apology.

    2% picked this

  3. If one commits a wrongful

    Reversed Logic

    We don't have any means to prove that you should sincerely apologize. The first sentence only gives us criteria that would allow you to derive that you shouldn't: - you didn't wrong that person - you're apologizing for something other than wronging that person We know: should apologize → committed wrongful act and this says committed wrongful act → should apologize

    2% picked this

  4. An apology that cannot be

    Unsupported Relationship

    This says apology apology can't be sincerely → can't be sincerely accepted offered As we examined with (B), the criteria for sincerely offering an apology are non-overlapping with the criteria for sincerely accepting an apology, so there's no way to make one of them trigger the other.

    2% picked this

  5. Correct

    An apology cannot be both

    Why this is right

    This is saying that both sincere offers of apologies and sincere acceptance of apologies require that a wrongful act has occurred. We knew that offering a sincere apology required two things: 1. acknowledge you acted wrongfully 2. intend to avoid that act in the future We knew that sincerely accepting an apology required two things: 1. acknowledge a wrong 2. vow not to hold a grudge It looks like we can derive this answer choice, since both of those required "acknowledging that a wrongful act has occurred".

    Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    71% picked this

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