Q20 - The desire for praise is

[c.s.sun5]

I got really lost on this one and I've noticed that I tend to get lost a lot on these questions that are very "abstract" and play with your mind.

Can someone explain this question/answer for me and how you usually approach these kinds of questions without getting completely confused? Do you graph it out?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

This is a very tough question, and I think, when you say "abstract" questions that play with your mind (I know the feeling!) you may be referring to questions involving conditional logic, and you may want to generally review the rules of conditional logic.

There are a few ways one could approach a question like this, and you can get a better sense of it, perhaps, by diagramming, and other instructors may do that. I personally wouldn't, and here's the process I would use.

1. Read for the core and find the gap

What is the author's point?

One who aids others primarily out of a desire for praise does not deserve praise.

What is the supporting premise?

People merit praise only for actions motivated by a desire to help others.

What's the gap?

The author is assuming that desire for praise and desire to help others are mutually exclusive concepts, but they are not. One who aids primarily out of a desire for praise can still have a desire to help others, at least according to what we know.

So, in order for the argument to be sound, in order to bridge the gap between evidence and conclusion, we need to know that those who aid primarily out of a desire for praise are not motivated by a desire to help others.

These answer choices sound a lot alike, and if you don't have a clear sense of what you are looking for when you go in, you can be in trouble! It certainly helps to know what piece you need.

In this case, (A) matches exactly what we need, and is therefore correct.

It shows us that those who aid primarily out of a desire for praise are not motivated by a desire to help others.

Let's look at the other answers quickly:

(B) is tempting, but an assumption about actions "solely" motivated by a desire for praise doesn't match the argument.

(C) is also tempting, but it's not exactly the piece we need. In fact, this answer is really just a restatement of the premise (the contrapositive).

(D) Deserving praise for advancing one's own interest is not relevant for this conclusion.

(E) Motives vs consequences are not relevant to this core.

Again, you can diagram this, but diagrams tend to be a bit more helpful in absolute situations, and "primarily" in this case makes the diagramming a bit more complicated. Still, if you'd like to see it, please let us know, and I hope this was helpful!

[c.s.sun5]

Wow, the question makes so much sense when you explain it but absolutely made no sense when I was first doing it.

But just curious, how would you diagram this out?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Glad it makes sense -- if you were to diagram it, it would look as follows:

Let's use the symbols

M = merit praise
P = desire for praise
O = desire to help others

The first sentence of the argument is just background -- the conditional logic starts with the second statement:

"People merit praise only for actions motivated by a desire to help others"

This would translate into the conditional : M --> O.

(If you are uncertain which way the arrow should go between M and O, DON'T think about causation -- that will trip u up -- instead, think about what consequence MUST BE TRUE based on the trigger.

Based on this statement, if people deserve merit, MUST IT BE TRUE that they want to help others? Absolutely. So, we know M --> O is valid.

Based on this statement, if people wan to help others, MUST IT BE TRUE that they deserve merit? Not necessarily. Maybe they want to help, but don't actually help, and so maybe don't deserve merit. So, O --> M would be invalid.)

Now let's translate the conclusion:

"one who aids others primarily out of a desire for praise doesn't deserve (merit) praise."

We can translate this to D --> - M. If you desire, then you don't merit.

Note that this translation is not a 100% accurate because of the "primarily" and you want to make sure your diagramming doesn't make you forget such subtleties.

So, we've got

M --> O as evidence

D --> - M as the conclusion.

What do I need to add in order to get from evidence to conclusion? First, let's turn the evidence around, so it's closer in structure to the conclusion.

The contrapositive of M --> O would be - O -- > - M.

So how do we get from - O --> - M to proving D --> - M? We need to show that D leads to - O. That is, a if you desire praise, then you don't want to help others.

To summarize: We know - O -- > - M.

If we had a piece that said D --> - O, we could connect the chains to read:

D --> - O -- > - M.

If you diagrammed this argument and got to this point, you'd see that both (A) and (B) give you this missing piece (D -- > - O). Then it's the issue of "primarily" vs "solely" that makes (B) incorrect.

I hope that's helpful!

[peg_city]

Glad it makes sense -- if you were to diagram it, it would look as follows:

Let's use the symbols

M = merit praise
P = desire for praise
O = desire to help others

The first sentence of the argument is just background -- the conditional logic starts with the second statement:

"People merit praise only for actions motivated by a desire to help others"

This would translate into the conditional : M --> O.

(If you are uncertain which way the arrow should go between M and O, DON'T think about causation -- that will trip u up -- instead, think about what consequence MUST BE TRUE based on the trigger.

Based on this statement, if people deserve merit, MUST IT BE TRUE that they want to help others? Absolutely. So, we know M --> O is valid.

Based on this statement, if people wan to help others, MUST IT BE TRUE that they deserve merit? Not necessarily. Maybe they want to help, but don't actually help, and so maybe don't deserve merit. So, O --> M would be invalid.)

Now let's translate the conclusion:

"one who aids others primarily out of a desire for praise doesn't deserve (merit) praise."

We can translate this to D --> - M. If you desire, then you don't merit.

Note that this translation is not a 100% accurate because of the "primarily" and you want to make sure your diagramming doesn't make you forget such subtleties.

So, we've got

M --> O as evidence

D --> - M as the conclusion.

What do I need to add in order to get from evidence to conclusion? First, let's turn the evidence around, so it's closer in structure to the conclusion.

The contrapositive of M --> O would be - O -- > - M.

So how do we get from - O --> - M to proving D --> - M? We need to show that D leads to - O. That is, a if you desire praise, then you don't want to help others.

To summarize: We know - O -- > - M.

If we had a piece that said D --> - O, we could connect the chains to read:

D --> - O -- > - M.

If you diagrammed this argument and got to this point, you'd see that both (A) and (B) give you this missing piece (D -- > - O). Then it's the issue of "primarily" vs "solely" that makes (B) incorrect.

I hope that's helpful!

This is a great explanation

One question though,

Why are we adding D to O~ -> ~M and not O~ to D -> ~M

So we end up with O~ -> (D) -> M~ instead of what Mike had, (D) -> O~ -> ~M

O~ -> D instead of D-> O~ which is completely different and wrong.

Thanks again

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Hi -- this is a great question -- I may not understand it 100%, so please let me know if I don't address it completely and I'll be happy to further elaborate.

Let's say you knew, as evidence, that everyone who went to a certain doctor will for certain not get disease X.

With just this evidence, you want to PROVE that Sam will not get disease X. How would you do it?

You can show he went to this doctor, right?

Let's think about this with notation:

Evidence: D -> - X (doctor, no disease X).

Conclusion S --> - X (Sam, no disease X).

What we would need is S --> D (Sam went to the doctor).

If we had this, we can use our evidence to reach our conclusion.

S--> D--> - X, therefore Sam will not get disease X. (It allows us to conclude S --> - X).

This is very similar to the process I suggested above.

Now, with what you wrote, Peg_city, that would be (I believe, if I understand you correctly) something akin to D --> S --> - X, which would mean "If someone went to a doctor, that person is sam, and therefore that person did not get disease X." This is an improper connecting of evidence and conclusion.

One final comment, and this might be helpful if the above is not exactly what you were thinking -- think carefully about the conclusion you arrive at with the diagram you suggested --> you ended up concluding - O --> - M (if you don't desire to help others than you don't deserve merit). This is something we have already been told, and it is not the conclusion we needed to justify.

I hope that is helpful! This is a very subtle issue, so please let me know if you need further help.

[trevor.lovell]

Thanks for the help. I was primarily thrown by the word "primarily" in the stimulus. :)

I was oscillating between A and E. E had the problem mentioned above - consequences were never explicitly mentioned - and ignoring that, the part referring to motives was not a needed assumption b/c it was already stated in the stimulus ("because people merit praise only for those actions motivated by a desire to help others").

My problem with A was that the author implicitly acknowledges that a person can hold both motivations by using the word "primarily" to modify the statement about being motivated out of a desire for praise. If one can be described as primarily motivated by one thing, it follows that they can hold more than one motivation. Even now it seems to me there was a distinction drawn there that was not considered in the phrasing of answer choice A.

So there I was stuck with all my answer choices being flawed (in my imperfect view), and A and E were the least flawed.

It's more than a little convoluted but where I came back to A was that the author does not say that a person needs to be primarily motivated by a desire to help others, only that the motivation needs to be present for the action to merit praise. Therefore the author's conclusion is inconsistent without the assumption that a person who is primarily motivated by a desire for praise cannot also be motivated by a desire to help others.

[mlbrandow]

trevor.lovell,

Your description of A implies an unjustified assumption that because someone can have multiple motivations, that implies that they can also hold motivations for both praise and helping others. This is not the case. Perhaps the additional motivations are for a deity, or to help aliens, or nature, or some greater obligation to maintain some kind of equilibrium in the universe.

It does not follow that holding additional motivations than desire for praise requires or even allows one to hold motivation for others. And in fact he assumes they are mutually exclusive in the second half of that statement.

While (A) is worded more strongly than is needed, that is irrelevant, since the question asks you to assume that it is true.

[syousif3]

can someone please explain B for me?

I know that it is wrong because of the word solely but it does say in the conclusion "...one who aids others primarily out of a desire for praise..........."

I thought solely and primarily mean the same thing. I'm having a hard time seeing why it is wrong

[timmydoeslsat]

Solely and primarily are different from one another. Solely would of course mean by itself. Primarily is something that takes a sense of real importance that stands out from others. It does not have to be the only thing like solely is.

So that would be the first reason to get rid of B. However, if you had a situation where we knew something like A was occurring solely, then we would know that A would be something that is occurring primarily.

Think of it this way. Say you had a college with one sport: volleyball.

It would not only be the solely offered sport, it would also be the primary sport of the college.

Then think about how lacrosse is the primary sport at Johns Hopkins, yet it is not the sole sport at Johns Hopkins.

As for this argument:

Desire P ---> Desire Fav. Opin Others
Merit P ---> Motivated Desire Help Others
__________________________________
Desire P ---> ~Merit P

We can expect that the testwriters will give us an answer choice that shoes the two sufficient conditions could not occur together, which is to say that the two necessary conditions must conflict with one another. You could also very easily line up conditions, in which case, you would have this:

Desire P ---> Desire Fav. Opin Others
~Motivated Desire Help Others ---> ~Merit P
__________________________________
Desire P ---> ~Merit P

So our gap is [Desire Fav. Opin Others ---> ~Motivated Desire Help Others].

[wj097]

(E) Motives vs consequences are not relevant to this core.

Hi, if this was asking for a necessary assmption, would (E) qualify for it?

My thinking was that the main ideas in the argument, "motivated by a desire to help others" and "desire for praise", are all motives and while concept of "consequence" is not mentioned anywhere in the argument, the language in (E) seems to be saying that "something relevant rather than something irrelevant to the argument is used to determine the conclusion". Thx.

[rinagoldfield]

Hi, if this was asking for a necessary assmption, would (E) qualify for it?

My thinking was that the main ideas in the argument, "motivated by a desire to help others" and "desire for praise", are all motives and while concept of "consequence" is not mentioned anywhere in the argument, the language in (E) seems to be saying that "something relevant rather than something irrelevant to the argument is used to determine the conclusion". Thx.

(E) doesn’t give us a necessary assumption for a couple of reasons.

First of all, consequences haven’t been deemed "irrelevant" to praiseworthiness"”they just haven’t been discussed. We can diagram the premise of the argument like this:

an action merits praise --> the action was motivated by the desire to help others

All we know here is that every praiseworthy action was motivated by the desire to help others. This doesn’t preclude the possibility that every praiseworthy action also has certain consequences.

Put another way, this still could be true:

an action merits praise --> the action was motivated by the desire to help others AND the action has positive consequences

We can’t determine whether motives RATHER THAN consequences determine praiseworthiness, since we don’t know the relationship between consequences and praiseworthiness.

(Here’s an analogy for this conflict between irrelevant vs. undiscussed information:

Premise: Every woman is a human.

Woman --> Human

Despite the fact that this premise doesn’t mention XX chromosomes, we don’t know whether chromosomes are "irrelevant" to womanhood. This still could be true:

Woman --> Human AND XX chromosomes)

Now, what if (E) left out the consequences issue and said "The motives behind one’s actions in part determine whether or not one deserves praise for them?" Even this would not be a necessary assumption. We already know from the premise that motives are important determinants of praiseworthiness, so this would be a premise booster. Remember that all assumptions are unstated!

Does this make sense?

[lorraineogan]

Isn't B just a stronger version of the conclusion?

Conclusion:
Motivated to aid *primarily* for praise --> do not deserve praise

B:
Actions motivated *solely* for praise --> do not deserve praise

"Primarily" is weaker than "solely. "Even if B used a word with the same meaning of "solely", it still wouldn't bridge the gap, since it would be just a restatement of B, no? That's why I disagree with the above analysis that put the argument in conditional logic form. B is not just varying in degree, but it also does not fill the gap!

[timsportschuetz]

Your comments regarding (B) are great! I would like to add something else: (B) simply restates the conditional statement from the stimulus. The correct answer choice to any assumption questions CANNOT be a simple restatement of an arguments premise and/or conclusion! You will see these trap answers often if you know what to look for. Usually, the LSAT uses the contrapositive form of a stated premise or conclusion for a sometimes very attractive wrong answer choice!