"I don't feel real enough, unless people are watching." – Chuck Palahniuk

shafieiava September 21, 2019

I'm not sure how we are negating the sufficient condition here. When I negate the sufficient condition I get not RE -> PW ?

Skylar September 21, 2019

@yuetngan @shafieiava Happy to help.

The question states "I don't feel real enough, unless people are watching." Immediately, we should notice the word "unless" and recall that it is one of our Sufficient/Necessary terms to look out for. As we recall, the word "unless" introduces the Necessary condition, and the other part of the sentence is negated and made into the Sufficient condition. This is diagrammed as follows:

S -> N
RE (I feel real enough) -> PW (people are watching)
*Be careful when negating the Sufficient here, as it was originally negative so negating it creates a double negative ("I don't don't feel real enough") which we simplified above.

-N -> -S (contrapositive)
not PW (people are not watching) -> not RE (I don't feel real enough)

Therefore, we know that the correct answer is either (1) RE -> PW or (2) not PW -> not RE. Only the latter is offered as an answer choice (C), so we know that's the correct choice.
Oftentimes, the LSAT will test the contrapositive since it's an extra step. This is the case here, as answer choice C restates our contrapositive,

Does this make sense? Please let us know if you'd like further clarification.

Lucas December 13, 2019

I thought we were supposed to match what is being presented which is why I thought it was the last one. Still a bit confused...........

Lucas December 13, 2019

Wouldn't it be notRE - >PW

Lucas December 13, 2019

It's just a bit confusing because I didn't think it was asking for the contrapositive. I knew that unless was necessary. So do we always diagram it like this then? Because it seems a bit different in the course

Lucas December 13, 2019

The answer just looks odd as well because the necessary is switched for the sufficient, but the original sufficient stays the same?

Alex-Hoston June 29, 2022

IF the sentence states " I don't feel real = how is it that this does not translate to Not RE-->PW ??? since we are talking about not being real???
I hope this is clear.

Emil-Kunkin July 6, 2022

Hi Alex,

Our original statement is Not RE unless PW.

I like to approach an unless statement by replacing the unless with "if it is not the case"

That would then make our statement: Not RE if it is not the case that PW.

We can then diagram this as

If Not PW -> Not RE.

For an unless statement, we negate the sufficient condition.