October 2008 LSAT Section 1 Question 16

Philosopher: An event is intentional if it is a human action performed on the basis of a specific motivation. An eve...

shafieiava on January 13, 2020

Mapping this question

Can someone please demonstrate how they mapped the conditional statements in the stimulus and how that led them to the correct answer choice? From my understanding of the stimulus it seems that the correct answer is just merely applying the first conditional statement in the stimulus. Is this not a parallel reasoning question that requires you to choose the same answer choice that mirrors the reasoning in the stimulus? Thanks for your help in advance!

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Ravi on January 15, 2020

@shafieiava,

Let's take a look.

Here's how I would diagram the stimulus:

SM - >Intentional (not Intentional - >not SM)
No SM and no ENPP - >Random (not Random - >SM or ENPP)

The correct answer choice is going to tell us that either an event is
intentional or random based on meeting one of the sufficient
conditions contained in our diagrams. Additionally, the correct answer
may be framed as the contrapositive of one of these, so we need to
look out for that as well.

(B) says, "Ellis tore the envelope open in order to read its contents,
but the envelope was empty. Nevertheless, because Ellis acted on the
basis of a specific motivation, tearing the envelope open was an
intentional event."

(B) matches the first conditional statement of our diagram, as you
noted. Ellis has a specific motivation, so Ellis has committed an
intentional event. This is a principle question, and it's very similar
to a parallel reasoning question. We're just looking for an answer
choice that follows the same position as what's put forth in the
philosopher's argument.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions!