October 2001 LSAT Section 1 Question 14

Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia. Powers of observation and analysis, which schools ...

Anna20 on August 12, 2020

S&N Diagramming

Grateful if you could please let me know if the below is okay - I feel like the below went a bit off-piste. not NBG --> RIA RIA --> IEL ------------ not NBG --> RIA --> IEL I can see why the correct answer is D, because the premise tells us you can only get IEL by gaining an intuitive grasp of everyday life - but that's not clear from my diagram? Thanks so much!

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Ravi on August 13, 2020

@Anna2020,

We have the conclusion at the beginning:

In academia-->can't become a great novelist

The support for this is the second part of the last sentence:

Academic-->not immersed in daily life

Not immersed in daily life-->don't grasp emotions of daily life (this is the contrapositive of grasp emotions of daily life-->immersed in daily life)

So our premises come together to form

Academic-->not immersed in daily life-->don't grasp emotions of daily life

Notice, though, there's a gap here between the second premise and the conclusion. We don't have a connection between not grasping the emotions of daily life and not being a great novelist, so the necessary premise is that if you don't grasp the emotions of daily life, you can't be a great novelist.

Take a look at my diagram and let me know if you have any other questions!