Q23 - Whoever is kind is loved

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Would anyone be able to explain numbers 6 & 23 on the LR section 2 from Preptest 46: June 2005?

Sure.

There are two premises and a conclusion.

K ---> loved
loves ---> H
-------------
K ---> H

(Notation Key: K = kind, H = happy)

At first glance it might not look as though there is a gap in the argument. But there is a distinction between loved and loves. The former is an action received, whereas the latter is an action given.

So the assumption is

Whoever is loved by someone loves anyone. Best expressed in answer choice (D), but hidden in the form of the contrapositive!

(A) doesn't relate to the first premise.
(B) doesn't relate to the first premise.
(C) attempts to skip the first premise, but then has the relationship reversed.
(E) doesn't relate to the first premise.

I hope that helps clear up this really tricky problem.

[skapur777]

I was put off by the 'whoever loves everyone' in the answer choices here.

I eliminated them because I didn't see a premise concerning anyone who loves EVERYONE and so I thought it was irrelevant.

Did I get lucky here or did i miss something?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I think you might have just gotten lucky, but check my reasoning and let me know if I missed something implied by your question. Here's a similar argument that doesn't involve "loves everyone" and yet still has an answer choice that uses "loves everyone" as an outcome that would more than ensure the conclusion.

Anyone who is kind, is loved by someone. Thus, anyone who is kind loves someone.

An assumption that would ensure the conclusion follows might be:

Anyone who is loved by someone loves everyone.

See how the outcome of the assumption is broader than the outcome of the conclusion? Sometimes you have to be careful to allow those broader outcomes to still arrive at the more narrow conclusion.

Does that answer your question?

[mlbrandow]

I picked (E) on this one, and in reviewing realized my mistake (reversal).

But then that got me thinking--would reversing (E) be a credited response?

I discussed this with a friend and think it would, however I can't think of an example where something like this has ever been linked before in a formal logic question:


P1: If Kind then loved by somebody. (unused)

(Er) If kind then loves everyone.
[implied] If loves everyone then loves anyone.
P2: If loves anyone then happy.
C: If kind then happy.

This method omits a premise and depends on connectivity of everyone to anyone.


Has there been another formal logic question in any released test that does anything like this, either in completely omitting a premise or in relying on a hidden inference to connect an answer choice to the gap?

[jamesquinnw]

Hey Brandow-

I'd imagine when a lot of LSATers pre-phrase a correct answer choice for this stimulus, they come up with something like, "anyone who is kind loves anyone". The extreme "anyone who is kind loves everyone" goes beyond the language in the stimulus. If you go back and read the prompt and the answer choices, it's clearly the answer choices that put "everyone" in our heads; the stimulus only contains "anyone" and "somebody". Like you and mshermn pointed out, an answer choice reading something like "anyone who is kind loves EVERYONE" would make the conclusion valid (since "anyone" is a subset of "everyone"), but in general, when you approach answer choices, it's more time- efficient to first look for choices that conform snugly to the logical pre-phrase before resorting to additional layers of complexity like set/subset inferences.

[wj097]

So the assumption is

Whoever is loved by someone loves anyone. Best expressed in answer choice (D), but hidden in the form of the contrapositive!

Hey Matt, I think (D) describes something different from the assumption you stated above: Whoever is loved by someone loves anyone).

The contrapositive of (D) reads "Whoever is loved by someone loves someone" which is less then adequate for the conclusion to logically follow.

Any thoughts??

Thx

[IsaacS381]

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. Everyone is saying the contrapositive of D is what proves it right, but even if "everyone who loves nobody is not loved by anyone themselves" it's still possible that "some people who love someone else are not in turn loved by anyone else."

If that's the case, then:

P: Whoever loves anyone is happy
–P: Whoever is kind is loved
P: All who love no one aren't loved.
–P: BUT some people who love someone may not necessarily be loved. For this to work toward the conclusion, it would have to be "All those who love someone are loved by someone," which I don't see being equivalent to "all who love no one are not loved." Because Jim could love someone and still not be loved.
Thus, we can only conclude that: The people who love are happy, and of those people who love and are happy, those who are ALSO loved are kind, therefore, SOME people who are kind are happy.

We're still missing the [Necessary premise]: Whoever is loved by someone also loves anyone.

SO…the conclusion (C: Anyone who is kind is happy) doesn't necessarily follow, because just because someone is kind (and are loved) doesn't mean they also love someone (and are happy).

Wouldn't E be a better choice? If All who love everyone is kind, then whoever is kind loves everyone, and whoever loves anyone is happy, and therefore whoever is kind is happy.

I probably didn't explain it properly above, but I'm just having a hard time understanding this problem.

[LaurenL251]

Hi everyone!
I am struggling with this problem in two ways: 1)I don't understand how people seem to be able to leap to the right sufficient assumption without making another assumption before that in order to reach it. 2) I don't understand why we can't just connect premise 1 to the conclusion or just premise 2 to the conclusion and say that doing so reached the conclusion?
Any help is much appreciated!!!

Struggle 1:
I am just confused about how many assumptions (is that correct to say?) we have to make in order to reach the correct sufficient assumption (D), " Whoever loves no one is loved by no one" AKA "Whoever is loved by somebody loves anyone."

Premise 1: Kind -> Loved

Premise 2: Loves -> Happy

Conclusion: Kind -> Happy

I can clearly see that the two mismatched terms are "Loved" and "Loves" and I know they have to be connected in order to close the gap in the argument. But how do I know if it is "Whoever is loved by someone loves anyone" (Which I think is the correct answer) or "Whoever loves anyone is loved by someone."
I feel like a lot of people on this post are leaping to the correct assumption and connecting these two terms effortlessly and I'm not sure I can do that without making another assumption first. The assumption I would make first is, "Whoever is loved by somebody is happy." And then from that assumption, I combine it with Premise 2 and I reach Loved->Loves.

First, I combined Premise 1 with the conclusion to get: Loved->Happy.
Then, I combined Loved->Happy with Premise 2 to get: Loved -> Loves.

Is this the correct way to do it or is there a faster way to connect Loved->Loves?

Struggle 2
When I first did this question I also was confused with why it couldn't just be: Loved->Happy by connecting Premise 1 to the conclusion. Since this left out Premise 2, is that why this would not be a sufficient assumption? Because if Kind->Loved->Happy. Why can't the assumption be Loved->Happy lead to Kind->Happy?

Or why couldn't it be even Kind->Loves by connecting the Conclusion to Premise 2. This answer would leave out Premise 1...is that why this also could not be the answer? Because if Kind->Loves->Happy why can't the assumption be Kind->Loves because it could also lead to Kind->Happy.
Do we need to connect every premise to the conclusion? Why can't I ignore a premise and connect one to reach the conclusion. I feel like we kind of ignored the first premise of a similar question in LSAT 48, 4, 21 (The Sincerity, Success, and Trust question).

Thanks so much for your help in advance! I know this is a lot.