Daily Drills 52 - Section 52 - Question 3

P: All leprechauns are shoemakers.P: No leprechauns are females.C: ?

Kenny1111 January 23, 2024

It seems the instructors do not agree about this question

So for this question, is the correct answer a or e. the presumed logic of e relies on there not being any leprechauns that exist, however, if that is true that opens up you requiring knowledge of what exist and what does not exist. we would have to throw out the logic of we assume a premise to be absolutely true, unless otherwise specified by the premises. if the lsat says all dogs walk on two legs, are we supposed to take away, "ah but this is impossible" therefore you are wrong! (probably why lsat refers to real world situations) similarly a stimuli can have a false conclusion drawn from the premises, it is no different than if the lsat asks us to perform flawed parallel reasoning. sure a necessary assumption here is that leprechauns exist. if asked to weaken then you could say leprechauns dont exist. but weaken as a question type requires by nature to go beyond the stimulus. I think it is extremely confusing for the answer to be represented beyond pure logic especially since the lsat will say "if the above is true, if the above is correct." even if this is correct is true that i should generally operate with the assumption that two all statements can have a some inference if the sufficient terms are the same. all dogs in this competition are black, all dogs have four legs, some black dogs have four legs.

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Kenny1111 January 23, 2024

sorry a conclusion drawn on false premises *

Kenny1111 January 23, 2024

I think a close example of what I'm trying to say is "Pluto is a full sized planet" "Pluto is icy". we could then conclude some full sized planets are icy. but actually, by the logic proposed I would need to recognize that pluto is not a full sized planet (it is a dwarf planet)! therefore we can conclude nothing because actually pluto is not a full sized planet. similarly imagine a question about god or divinity (could we go, ah but to my knowlege, god doesnt exist, cant make any deductions) slightly off track, but how do we know for sure leprechauns dont exist, isnt this the logical fallacy of believing the falsity of something just because we dont have evidence proving it. maybe that is the nuance practicing law will require, but since I've been studying I have not encountered a question where lsat has relied on that knowledge. Actually if there is could we get an example of it to see what it may look like, because then that would be quite important to have basic knowledge of how it may show up.

Emil-Kunkin January 25, 2024

I see what you're saying, and I think that that is a bit of a weakness of these drills. Real questions will give us guideposts as you mentioned: a must be true (which this drill is mirroring) will ask us to assume the truth of the statement above, that is, to take the premises as true regardless of whether than are any leprechauns. Strengthen and weaken questions will ask us what an answer Choice, if true, would attack or strengthen the argument. In these cases we are allowed to attack the premises: if there is a premise that "there is strong evidence all dogs walk on two legs" we could weaken this by showing there is also strong evidence that they do not.

Put simply, you are allowed to bring in the outside knowledge of common sense. If you are asked to weaken or help and argument you can't simply pretend you do not live in the real world- there is no such thing as pure logic devoid of experience. However you should not bring in specialized knowledge: if you happen to be a dog biologist some rare features of dog legs isn't going to be relevant. However on must be true questions we do have to accept the statement ls as true- becuase the question instructs us to do so.