Q4 - The main point

[charles.dj.kim]

Didn't have trouble with the questions, but was wondering how to diagram "until...no" since it has two negatives. Hope this is not a dumb question T__T

Stimulus: No written constitution is more than a paper with words on it until those words are both interpreted and applied.

I get confused because until becomes the necessary and no moves over to the necessary..making it negative.

So, should it read
written constitution is more than a paper with words ---> (-) those words are both interpreted and applied


I also learned that until can mean "if not" and that creates a different conditional when I make it:

(-) those words are both interpreted and applied ---> (-) written constitution is more than a paper with words on it

Please help!

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Not a dumb question, in the sense that it's tricky to explain this one with our typical robotic conditional rules.

If I gave you this sentence:
"No boy is a man until he kills his first deer".

You would probably agree with these rephrasings:

IF you haven't killed a deer, you're not a man yet.

IF you are a man, you've killed your first deer.

What we're really doing is applying the "No" rule you cited to just that half of the conditional sentence.

"No boy is a man" = "all boys are NOT yet a man".

"no written constitution is more than paper/words" = "all written constitutions are just paper/words".

So if you just do that rephrasing first, then the "Until" rule you cited won't muck things up.

IF it hasn't been interpreted/applied --> all written constitutions are just paper/words.

IF any written constitution is MORE than just paper/words --> then is has been interpreted/applied.

Hope this helps.

========
In terms of the actual question (since there's no post for it yet), our task on Main Conclusion is simply to find and bracket off the conclusion (then pick whichever answer choice looks closest to what we've bracketed off).

However, there are a couple very important tendencies to memorize for a Main Conclusion question:

1. The Main Conclusion is almost never the last sentence and almost never advertised with a "Thus, Therefore, Hence". That would make our task way too easy. So be very skeptical if you're considering bracketing off a last sentence.

2. The Main Conclusion is almost always found in one of two places:
- The first sentence
or
- In the middle, usually after a "but/yet/however", disagreeing with someone's point of view introduced in the first sentence.

In this problem, the conclusion is kind of a hybrid of both of these two places. It's the first sentence, but it's also disagreeing with someone's point of view.

The rest of the argument goes on to flesh out why "this frequently expressed view" is false. The 'THEREFORE' in the final sentence indicates a subsidiary conclusion, but not the main one.

(A) This is a good paraphrase of the first sentence, so this is the answer.

(B) This idea was never said or implied. "Self-contradictory" is incredibly strong and unlikely.

(C) No comparison was ever made about "likelihood of misinterpretation"

(D) Nothing was ever said or implied about "ease of preservation".

(E) This sounds more like a Necessary Assumption ... no 'criteria' were mentioned.