LSAT 72, Logical Reasoning II, Q24, LSATHacks

LR Question 24 Explanation, by LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: All unemployed artists are sympathetic to social…

QUESTION TYPE: Must be True

FACTS: 

1. Unemployed artist ➞ social justice
2. Employed artist ➞ fame
3. contrapositives: fame ➞ unemployed ➞ social justice
4. social justice ➞ employed ➞ fame

ANALYSIS: This argument is a slight stretch. It incorrectly assumes that if you are an artist you are either employed or are unemployed. 

In real life, we know there are other options: retired, self-employed, part time artist, hobby artist, independently wealth artist, dropped out of the labor force artist etc.

Normally, the LSAT sticks to real life. So I don’t think it’s valid to assume that the opposite of employed is unemployed.

However, the right answer only works if you make this assumption. And it’s not that much of a stretch. So I chose the correct answer without difficulty. It’s good to see subtleties, but don’t tie yourself into knots and avoid an obviously correct answer because of a tiny quibble. 

Using the assumption that unemployed and employed are opposites, I made two connected statements above, numbers 3 and 4. I just took the contrapositives of each statement, and negated unemployed to employed and vice versa. 

___________

1. CORRECT. This is statement #3 from the facts section.
2. This is totally unsupported. It doesn’t match any of the statements above. 
3. This incorrectly reverses #3.
4. This incorrectly reverses #3.
5. Not quite. Assuming artists are either unemployed or employed, then we could say artists are either interested in social justice or uninterested in fame.
   We don’t know if any artists are interested in fame. We only know that if an artist is interested in fame, they are unemployed.

Hi, I'm Graeme Blake

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