Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S3 · Q24 Library preservationist: Due to

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Library preservationist: Due to the continual physical deterioration of the medieval manuscripts in our library's collection, we have decided to restore most of our medieval manuscripts that are of widely acknowledged cultural significance, though this means that some medieval manuscripts whose authenticity is suspect will be restored.

Statements

quantified (most, some)

Most culturally significant medieval manuscripts will be restored

Some dubiously authentic medieval manuscripts will be restored

conditionals (only, will not)

Will be → manuscript's safety can be restored ensured during restoration

Not frequently → won't be consulted manuscript restored

Evaluate

Beyond the quantified and conditional statements, there are also a couple Causal connectors (due to / this means that), so it's possible the correct answer will deal with those relationships.

But there's a Pivot word (however) introducing the final sentence, which usually suggests that our thinking job is to integrate that however sentence with what came before. The However sentence gives us two conditionals. Do they chain together? Do they have any overlapping term?

They both deal with the concept of "will / will not be restored", but they don't chain together. They both start from the same trigger, though.

Manuscript will safety can frequently be restored → be ensured and consulted

We can combine this with the quantified facts we got earlier about certain manuscripts being restored.

Since we were told that most "culturally significant" manuscripts will be restored

We can apply this conditional rule and derive that most "culturally significant" manuscripts are frequently consulted and their safety can be ensured during the restoration process.

Since we were told that some "dubious authenticity" manuscripts will be restored

We can apply this conditional rule and derive that some "dubious authenticity" manuscripts are frequently consulted and their safety can be ensured during the restoration process.

Goal

Look for anything provable, but it will probably involve applying "frequently consulted", "safety can be ensured", or both, to the one of the types of manuscripts that we were told are going to be restored.

24.

If all of the library preservationist's statements are true, which one of the following must be true of the medieval manuscripts in the library's collection?

  1. Correct

    Some of the medieval manuscripts

    Why this is right

    We were told that "some of the medieval manuscripts whose authenticity is suspect" will be restored. And we were told in the final claim that "if it's going to be restored, then it's frequently consulted by researchers". If we put those two ideas together, we get this answer.

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

    69% picked this

  2. All of the medieval manuscripts

    Too Strong: all

    We could pick this answer if it said "Most". We know that most of the medieval manuscripts widely acknowledged to be of cultural significance will be restored, and we know that "if it's going to be restored, then its safety can be ensured". So we know that "most of the culturally significant manuscripts have safety that can be ensured". But we don't know whether all of them are that way.

    6% picked this

  3. All of the medieval manuscripts

    Illegal Logic

    This is trying to tie together two outcomes that spring from the same trigger. Will be restored → safety can be ensured Will be restored → frequently consulted We never allowed to look at two rules like that and then assume a conditional relationship between the outcomes. Suppose we had these two conditionals about being male: Male → has y-chromosome Male → loves mother We couldn't say "All people who love their mother have y-chromosomes", because of course women love their mothers too but do not have y-chromosomes.

    13% picked this

  4. The medieval manuscripts most susceptible

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: most susceptible Relative vs. Absolute We heard in absolute terms that many of these medieval manuscripts are susceptible to deterioration. But there isn't any information about different degrees of susceptibility. We don't know anything about which manuscripts are most susceptible to deterioration.

    6% picked this

  5. None of the medieval manuscripts

    Too Strong: none

    Let's say there are 100 medieval manuscripts that are acknowledged to be of cultural significance. The paragraph told us that most of them (51) will be restored. We know that all the ones being restored are frequently consulted, so all 51 of those are frequently consulted. That still leaves 49 medieval manuscripts that are acknowledged to be of cultural significance that aren't being restored. Couldn't at least one of them be something that is rarely consulted by researchers? Certainly! Thus this answer could be disproven. If at least one of those 49 culturally significant manuscripts is rarely consulted, then it's false to say "none of the rarely consulted ones are culturally significant". One way to deal with this answer is to just think about the trigger it's giving us: rarely consulted → not culturally significant Do we know anything that springs from that trigger? rarely consulted → ? ? ? Yes, we know that rarely consulted are not restored. rarely consulted → not restored So to make this answer work, we'd ask ourselves whether we were given this relationship. not restored → not culturally significant culturally significant → restored We were not. We were only told that most culturally significant would be restored, not that all of them would be. In that sense, this answer has the same problem as (B) did.

    7% picked this

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