June 2006 LSAT Section 2 Question 17

Human beings can exhibit complex, goal–oriented behavior without conscious awareness of what they are doing. Thus, me...

gharibiannick on August 19, 2020

CONFUSED

First off, I thought "without" basically meant unless. negate the sufficient and unless is followed by necessary. Based on this information, I proceeded the question such as: Premise: Not A--->B Conclusion: C------->Not B Gap? C-->A Am I missing something?

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shunhe on August 19, 2020

Hi @gharibiannick,

Thanks for the question! So “without” is diagrammed as “unless” when being used in a conditional sense. But here, your diagram isn’t completely correct. It’s not

~Conscious awareness —> Exhibit complex, goal-oriented behavior

It’s

~Conscious awareness —> CAN exhibit complex, goal-oriented behavior

And the word “can” is an important one here. It’s not that “if something doesn’t have conscious awareness, it exhibits a complex goal-oriented behavior.” It’s that if it doesn’t have conscious awareness, it still can exhibit this behavior. Not that it has to. Similarly, the last sentence isn’t how you diagrammed it. It tells us that intelligence won’t establish consciousness, and that’s not really a conditional relationship. What you diagrammed says “if you show they’re conscious, then you know for sure they’re not behavioral” (which also isn’t exactly the last sentence, since it’s about intelligence and not the behavior).

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