Logical Reasoning

PT9 · S2 · Q23 A poor farmer was fond

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A poor farmer was fond of telling his children: “In this world, you are either rich or poor, and you are either honest or dishonest.

These are all conditional statements so you might benefit from diagramming them.

Conclusion (Therefore)

All rich farmers are dishonest. RF → D

Evidence

In this world, you are either rich or poor ~ R → P

and you are either honest or dishonest. ~ H → D

Note: When diagramming, we translate "either/or" statements into

Evaluate

Since this is a Sufficient Assumption question with a conditional conclusion, we can use what we sometimes call the Road Trip Technique. Think of the argument as a road trip. The Left term in the conclusion is your starting point and the Right term is your destination. Draw them out with space between them:

RF D

Then, use the premises to "build the road" that leads you from your starting point to your destination. With your premises built in, the road will still have a hole in it. That's the missing link that will make the argument valid, so that's your prediction.

According to our premises, where does RF lead you? Nowhere. Neither of our premises or their contrapositives put "Rich" on the left.

According to our premises, what leads to D? ~ H, according to premise 2.

So, our complete "road" looks like this:

RF ~ H → D

Like many conditional Sufficient Assumption arguments, one of the premises isn't part of the road. That's fine. The missing link is RF → ~ H: Rich farmers are not honest.

Goal

Look for an answer that establishes that rich farmers can't be honest. If we get lucky, the answer will say that explicitly. If they want to make things harder, they might run that through "the complicator" so stay flexible and look for the right ideas, not particular words or phrases.

23.

The farmer’s conclusion is properly drawn if the argument assumes that

  1. Correct

    every honest farmer is poor

    Why this is right

    If every honest farmer is poor, that means are rich farmers can't be honest. That aligns with our prediction, but in a really mean way. The writers definitely ran the answer through the complicator, and they also relied on a common-sense assumption that you can't be both poor and rich. Now, if you're thinking "wait, didn't they tell us that you're either one or the other? Doesn't that mean you can't be both?" be careful. On the LSAT, "or" and even "either / or" isn't typically exclusionary. That's complicator-logic-speak for "or" doesn't exclude the possibility of "both." But in this case, since common sense tells us that rich and poor are opposites, we're allowed to go from "every honest farmer is poor" to "rich farmers are not honest."

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

    61% picked this

  2. every honest person is a

    Opposite (if anything)

    We need to establish that these richy rich farmers are not honest. Establishing that every honest person is a farmer is going in the opposite direction. If this said "every honest person is not a farmer" it would be a correct answer.

    2% picked this

  3. everyone who is dishonest is

    Reversal: conclusion flip

    The conclusion is that all rich farmers are dishonest. This reverses that conclusion and tells us that all dishonest folks are rich farmers.

    12% picked this

  4. everyone who is poor is

    Negation (if anything)

    We're trying to establish that our rich farmers are not honest. If we're going to use the concept of being poor to do that, you need to rely on the common-sense assumption that if you're rich, you're not poor. If we assume that, we know our rich farmers aren't poor. Does this answer tell us that if you're not poor, you're not honest? Nope. It's the negation of a viable answer.

    23% picked this

  5. every poor person is a

    No Impact

    If every poor person is a farmer, what impact does that have on our conclusion about rich farmers? None.

    2% picked this

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