certain inferences

[aznriceboi17]

I have a question about deriving certain inferences. In one of the games from the LG study guide (for reference, it's on pg 498 of the third edition) there is the following rule:

"There will be no opening act at the concert immediately following the concert at which F plays."

Looking at the solution diagram, they infer that F does NOT play at the last conference. There's no explanation for this game, but after working through it, I suspect they used the above rule acting alone to infer that F doesn't play last. Is this a valid assumption? To me it seems like you could have F play last, in which case the above rule vacuously holds since there is no concert after the one that F plays at (a bit cheap, maybe, but still valid).

Is there an actual LSAT game where this sort of situation came up? I'd be curious to see if seeing that game, and knowing the official solution, one could then figure out how the LSAC would interpret such rule statements.

Thanks!

[tommywallach]

Hey Rice,

No, your logic here is flawed. If they say "the concert," then they're telling you there IS a concert, definitively. For the issue you raise to be valid, they would always say:

If there is a concert directly following F, that concert won't have an opening act.

The way they worded it tells you definitively that there must be a concert following F (the concert uses the definitive pronoun the), so F can't be last.

Hope that helps!

-t

[aznriceboi17]

Hi Tommy, that definitely clears things up. Thanks!