Tanya would refrain from littering if everyone else refrained from littering. None of her friends litter, and therefo...

shunhe July 13, 2020

Hi @Brett-Lindsay,

Thanks for the question! I think that “should” is pretty much almost always prescriptive, including in the example that you named. There’s definitely no “descriptive in premises, prescriptive in conclusions” distinction to be made.

Remember that when something is descriptive, it just means that it describes the state of affairs in the world. So “the chair is red” is descriptive. When something is prescriptive, it’s suggesting a course of action (including in a broad sense) or otherwise legislating or proposing a state of affairs as somehow better than another. So “people shouldn’t kill each other” is a prescriptive statement.

Now, let’s look at the statement you proposed: “if a talented artist is willing to starve for her career, then her friends should take her choice of profession seriously.” Is “should” being used descriptively or prescriptively? It looks to me like it’s prescriptive. After all, the statement is saying how the friends “should” react; it is suggesting that the friends react in that way, or suggesting that that way of reacting is better than others, and not just describing a way in which the friends do in fact react. So this is still a prescriptive statement.

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

Brett-Lindsay July 15, 2020

Hi @shunhe,

I appreciate the response. Still, I find it a little hard to agree with you on "should" never being used descriptively. We do it all the time in real life, so is that an LSAT distinction?

I think that reading only the first sentence in isolation, it does seem prescriptive (that was how I read it too, until I read the rest of the answer).

"If a talented artist is willing to starve for her career, then her friends should take her choice of profession seriously. Donna's friends take her choice of profession seriously, and she is willing to starve for her career, so she must be a talented artist."

In life, we always say things like, "That should do the trick." "it should work out all right," etc. and we use "should" to mean "probably will... I guess" or something weaker than the prescriptive should.

Sometimes, it's easy to be influenced by common everyday usage of words. Should (prescriptive) I just assume that all LSAT uses are prescriptive? I do realize that we need to be quite literal with word usage.

I should be okay with that, lol.

Thanks again.

shunhe July 15, 2020

Hey @Brett-Lindsay, I think you're right in that should can be used descriptively sometimes in real life, like when it's used to indicate a probable state of affairs (as in "that should do the trick"). I would still say that the vast majority of the time on the LSAT, it's used prescriptively. In that answer choice, I could see it being used both ways, but would still lean towards a prescriptive use here. Either way, wouldn't make a conclusion/premise distinction. It seems you have a decent grasp of prescriptive vs descriptive, so you should presume prescriptive "should," but if you really can't construe it as prescriptive and it seems obviously descriptive to you, it's probably descriptive. Hope this helps!

Brett-Lindsay July 15, 2020

That does help clarify it.

Thanks, @shunhe