June 2019 LSAT Section 3 Question 16

If a novelist is popular he or she can vividly imagine large numbers of characters, each with a personality and attit...

kens on June 14, 2020

June 2019 SEC 3 Q16

Is it correct to assume that popular novelist in this case is concerning "all" popular novelist? So, even if the passage does not explicitly use quantifier we can assume that it's an all statement?

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shunhe on June 14, 2020

Hi @kenken,

Thanks for the question! I’m assuming you’re referring to the beginning of the first sentence where it says that “if a novelist is popular…” And in this case, then yes, it’s functionally equivalent to a statement about all popular novelists. “If a novelist is popular” and “all popular novelists” have the same meanings, which is reflected in ordinary language. For example, “all chocolate ice cream is delicious” and “if ice cream is chocolate, it’s delicious” mean the same thing. Because the first one explicitly says it’s true of all members of the X in “all X,” whereas the second says that it’s true of each member of X individually, which is the same as saying it’s true of all members in the class.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.