June 2010 LSAT Section 5 Question 18

Based on the passage, it can be concluded that the author and Broyles-González hold essentially the same attitude toward

andreaskormusis on July 28, 2020

Understanding "Argument Completion Drills"

Since there is no discussion on the flashcards, I'll have to write this here. The drills given to us make sense to me when answering the question, however i seem to come up with the contrapositive as the main answer more often than not. For example: In a question stating- P1: D -> A P2: C -> D P3: ------------ C: Not X -> A I will typically answer with "Not X -> C" whereas the drill will show that as the contrapositive. Is this a problem? Am I still right for determining that since if I flip and switch that I'll get the main answer? IF IT IS A PROBLEM, how do I go about understanding the proper way to complete the argument without getting the contrapositive first? Thanks for the help!

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shunhe on July 29, 2020

Hi @andreaskormusis,

Thanks for the question! Definitely don’t worry about coming up with the contrapositive as the main answer. Remember, the contrapositive is logically equivalent to whatever the original chain was. So if you’re getting the contrapositive, it just means you’re arriving at the same answer in a different way. In your example, for example, you could think that the answer is

~X —> C

Because that’ll get you

~X —> C —> D —> A

Which will get you ~X — > A. Honestly, that way makes more sense to me, and that’s probably what I would have answered as well. You could also think that the answer is

~A —> X

Though it’s a bit less intuitive and requires more flipping stuff. So long story short, not a problem at all, good job and keep going at it. It’s not like the LSAT will test you on argument completion drills; as long as you can get the right conditional and can recognize that you might have to take the contrapositive sometimes to match the answer choice, you’re good.

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

andreaskormusis on July 29, 2020

Awesome thanks! For me its more of as long as I'm understanding the simplified breakdown correctly can build up to understanding the full thing correctly. Thanks for the help

shunhe on July 30, 2020

Yup, that's a great way to think about it, keep it up! Glad I was able to help.