I completely understand that these questions are an exercise to teach us that, simply from the basic structure of question, you can predict the structure of the answer.
However, if one of the premises merely repeats the conclusion, as it does in this problem, I fail to see how that could be considered wrong on the LSAT....unless do they actually raise the "tautological" objection?
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You are correct that (A) by itself allows the conclusion to be drawn since it is merely a restatement of this conclusion.
However, the point of these drills is to combine the existing premise (i.e. C-most-A) with something to arrive at the conclusion (i.e. C-most-not B).
Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
jsaadeinJune 23, 2016
Why is it C-most-A; A-some-C and not A-most-C? In the previous question it was -some- reciprocal.
MehranJune 23, 2016
@jsaadein because it would not be correct to keep "most" when reversing a "most" statement.
This is because most means "more than half" which is a percentage. The actual number, therefore, will be determined by total size of corresponding variable.
An example will clarify this point:
"Most Supreme Court Justices attended Harvard Law School."
This was a true statement before Scalia passed away (i.e. 5 of 9 = 55.5%).
It would be incorrect to reverse this statement and keep "most" as demonstrated with:
"Most people who attended Harvard Law School are Supreme Court Justices."
There are around 36,000 HLS graduates worldwide and, since there have only been 112 Justices, it is clearly not true that over 18,000 have become Supreme Court Justices.
We could, however, use "some" because "some" means "at least one" on the LSAT:
"Some people who attended Harvard Law School are Supreme Court Justices."
Hope this helps! For a more in-depth discussion on these concepts, please watch our lesson on Quantifiers.
mamieOctober 6, 2019
Why is the contrapositive of the conclusion not B - some - c. Why isn't it B - some - not C?
