October 2010 LSAT Section 1 Question 1

By referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "purely programmatic" (line 49) in nature, the author mo...

BK8 on February 10, 2020

Example 12

I am copying and pasting an old question that was never answered. I have the same question. I am having trouble with the inferences drawn from the third premise and answer choice A. It does not seem it is proper to infer that "If a person is dishonest, then they are rich" from the contrapositive of the third premise ("If not honest, then not a poor farmer"). Couldn't a dishonest person still be poor, just not a farmer? Similarly, the contrapositive of answer A is "If not poor, then not an honest farmer." I understand that the sufficient part of this contrapositive is identical to "If rich," but I am confused why we can infer that being rich is sufficient for being dishonest. Couldn't a rich person be honest so long as they are not a farmer? I guess my overall confusion would be how we can know that, for this question, we can make the logical jump from "Not an Honest Farmer" to "Dishonest," for example.

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BenMingov on March 10, 2020

Hi BK8, sorry for the late reply on our end, it seems we missed this one.

Let's look at the third premise

Poor farmer - > honest
NOT honest (which is the same as dishonest) - > NOT poor farmer (which based on the other premises, means being rich).

We have to use the other premises to understand that if someone isn't poor, then they are automatically rich. Because the farmer tells his children that the two options are rich or poor. There is no in between.

Additionally, we went from "NOT honest farmer" to "dishonest" because the necessary term in the third premise was actually "honest", which negated becomes "dishonest"

Lastly, you asked why couldn't a rich person be honest so long as they are not a farmer. I don't see a reason why this isn't possible according to the rules. There is no condition that states a rich person cannot be honest.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Anna20 on May 31, 2020

Hi @Ben - could I please follow up on this. Please could you walk through why you are able to reach D --> R from the previous premises, as these variables are not connected? It seems that we are asked to make the jump from dishonest to rich?

Further I didn't you would were able to categorise PF as falling under the umbrella of P? I didn't know you could do that? If you're a PF, you're not necessarily P if you are cash strapped but own a lot of land (illiquid asset)?

Anna20 on June 2, 2020

Please can I follow up on this. Thank you!