Nursing schools cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently do unless the problems of low ...

Arthur-Guerra November 16, 2019

Unless/Either Or

I attempted to invoke the "unless" rule in the first sentence and again tried to invoke the "either/or" rule when reading this question. From reading the first few questions/answers, I feel (and correct me if I am wrong) that when you are presented with multiple rules (in this case the "unless" vs. "either/or") in one senetence you revert to "If/Then"? Question 11's first sentence contains an unless and an "and/or" (at least how I read it), but it seems when presented with that you simply revert to the If/Then. Will there be questions that have multiple types of Sufficient and Necessary rules in it, or will they all be single-origin ruled? Thanks

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BenMingov November 17, 2019

Hi Arthur-Guerra,

Let me try to clear up the confusion.

When you are presented with "unless" (and "except", "until", "without"), we do treat that using the unless rule.

We can have statements that have the words "and" and/or "or", but those simply just show up as multiple conditions within either the necessary or sufficient condition. Let's look at the first sentence of the stimulus as an example.

"Nursing schools cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently do unless the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions in the nursing profession are solved"

Using the "unless" indicator word, we know that solving of both problems is necessary. The other term is sufficient and we negate it.

Nursing schools can attract a greater number of applicants - > solve problems of low wage AND solve problems of high-stress.

So, I hope I am answering your question, but when we are faced with questions that have "unless" and multiple conditions, we do not revert back to regular if/then, we still use the same techniques for handless "unless", "except", "until" and "without".

As for the issue of whether there will be multiple types of Sufficient and Necessary conditions, yes we can definitely have that. Here are some abstract examples.

If A or B or C, then we know that D and E will occur. This is diagrammed as follows (but keep in mind that this is applicable to regular sentences and passages as well):

A or B or C - > D and E

NOT D or NOT E - > NOT A and NOT B and NOT C

Please let me know if you have any other questions!