Q22 - Moralist: A statement is wholly

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Question Type
Most Supported (principle)

Stimulus
There are two statements here. First, a statement is wholly truthful only if it is true and made without intended deception. And second, a statement is a lie if it is intended to deceive or if the speaker, hearing that it was misinterpreted, refrains from clarifying it.

Answer Prephrase
We should be looking for an argument that concludes that a statement is a lie because either it was intended to deceive or the speaker failed to clarify a misinterpretation. Alternatively, we could choose an answer asserting that a statement was not wholly truthful since it was made with an intention to deceive.

Correct Answer
(D) is most supported. Walter intended to deceive a potential employer. By the second statement in the stimulus it is justified to conclude that Walter's statement was indeed a lie.

Incorrect Answers
(A) is not supported. The statement was not true so we cannot assert that Ted's statement was wholly truthful.

(B) contradicts the second statement. If Tony intended to deceive his granddaughter, then Tony did indeed lie.

(C) contradicts the first statement. To be wholly truthful a statement must indeed be true. This answer also doesn't conform to the second statement since the second statement cannot be used to justify an assertion that a claim was not a lie.

(E) contradicts the second statement. If the tour guide intended to deceive the tourists, then the tour guide did indeed tell a lie.

#officialexplanation

[ali.charania]

Could someone please walk me through the answer choices and point out why D is the correct answer? Thanks!

[timmydoeslsat]

The key to being able able to accelerate through these types of questions is realizing what cannot be possible. Here is what I mean.

The stimulus gives us two principles.

1) Wholly truthful ---> True and Made without intended deception

2) Intended to deceive or if speaker learns that a statement was misinterpreted but refrains from clarifying it ---> Lie


From those two statements, we can conclude what is NOT wholly truthful and what IS A LIE. This is because those are necessary conditions.

The contrapositive of principle (1) lets us conclude what IS NOT wholly truthful.

We will NEVER be able to conclude what IS WHOLLY TRUTHFUL. We have been giving two necessary conditions of what is wholly truthful, but we cannot conclude what is wholly truthful.

For the second principle, we CAN CONCLUDE what IS A LIE. However, we will NEVER be able to say what IS NOT A LIE.

I am going to do a quick example:

Doctor ---> Went to Medical School and took the MCAT at an earlier time in life


We can conclude from this statement of times we WILL NOT have a doctor from the contrapositive below.


~Go to Medical School or ~take the MCAT at an earlier time in life ---> ~ Doctor


Notice however that we cannot conclude when we have a doctor.

We know of two necessary conditions that one must have to a be doctor, but we all know there are other things, such as performing at a satisfactory level in Medical School, graduating Medical School, completing residency, etc. We will never be able to conclude when we have a doctor according to the conditional statement above.

Back to this problem. We know that we cannot conclude when we do not have a lie and when we have something that is wholly truthful.

Based on that, we can eliminate answer choices A, B, C, E because of this. You can literally answer this question in 25 seconds with a strong grasp of what you can conclude and what you cannot.

[bbirdwell]

He's right! So, applied to the choices, that might look like this (focussing first only on the conclusions in each choice):

(A) Ted's statement was truthful because... Nope! We cannot conclude truthful -- we can only start with truthful and arrive somewhere else (referring to the direction of the conditional arrows)

(B) Tony was not lying. Nope. We can only conclude "lying."

(C) Siobhan did not lie. Same issue as (B).

(D) WAS a lie! Looking good. Then we check out the logic. He used deception. Bingo.

(E) Intended to deceive. Nope. We can start here and arrive at "lie," but we can't arrive here.

[jamiejames]

The key to being able able to accelerate through these types of questions is realizing what cannot be possible. Here is what I mean.

The stimulus gives us two principles.

1) Wholly truthful ---> True and Made without intended deception

2) Intended to deceive or if speaker learns that a statement was misinterpreted but refrains from clarifying it ---> Lie


From those two statements, we can conclude what is NOT wholly truthful and what IS A LIE. This is because those are necessary conditions.

The contrapositive of principle (1) lets us conclude what IS NOT wholly truthful.

We will NEVER be able to conclude what IS WHOLLY TRUTHFUL. We have been giving two necessary conditions of what is wholly truthful, but we cannot conclude what is wholly truthful.

For the second principle, we CAN CONCLUDE what IS A LIE. However, we will NEVER be able to say what IS NOT A LIE.

I am going to do a quick example:

Doctor ---> Went to Medical School and took the MCAT at an earlier time in life


We can conclude from this statement of times we WILL NOT have a doctor from the contrapositive below.


~Go to Medical School or ~take the MCAT at an earlier time in life ---> ~ Doctor


Notice however that we cannot conclude when we have a doctor.

We know of two necessary conditions that one must have to a be doctor, but we all know there are other things, such as performing at a satisfactory level in Medical School, graduating Medical School, completing residency, etc. We will never be able to conclude when we have a doctor according to the conditional statement above.

Back to this problem. We know that we cannot conclude when we do not have a lie and when we have something that is wholly truthful.

Based on that, we can eliminate answer choices A, B, C, E because of this. You can literally answer this question in 25 seconds with a strong grasp of what you can conclude and what you cannot.

Incredible explanation, thank you. So this concept can be applied to all questions of this type?

[timmydoeslsat]

Yes, this is a sufficient and necessary issue.