Q5 - Oscar: I have been accused

[tamwaiman]

Hi,
I want to make sure of a question, is (A) contrapositive to (D)?

Thanks.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

No -

Most importantly,

"no right to quote" and "entitled to quote freely without attribution" are not opposites of one another, nor are "not granted permission" and "relinquish exclusive rights."

Furthermore, let's imagine they were. We could think of (A) as

- Permission -> - Right.

The contrapositive of this would be:

Right -> Permission.

However, if we were to assume that (A) and (D) are about equivalent subjects, (D) would read:

Permission --> Right. This would not be a valid contrapositive.

Hope that is helpful, and please follow up if you have further questions.

[jimmy902o]

Sure, D is not the contrapositive of A but why is it the better answer choice?

What about the contrapositive of A? Doesn't it say that if the author granted permission, then the writer has a right to quote passages... which would make any plagiarism accusations unwarranted? How is this not the better principle?

[timmydoeslsat]

Sure, D is not the contrapositive of A but why is it the better answer choice?

What about the contrapositive of A? Doesn't it say that if the author granted permission, then the writer has a right to quote passages... which would make any plagiarism accusations unwarranted? How is this not the better principle?

That is not the correct contrapositive of A.

Here is (A) in its original form:

Author has NOT granted a writer the right ---> Writer has NO right

Writer has right ---> Author granted writer the right


As you can see with the contrapositive of (A), this is telling us "if a writer has a right...."

This is what we are trying to determine! We do NOT have a case of this!

Whereas in D....

Writer relinquishes his/her right to material ---> Writer entitled to quote freely.

We have a case in the stimulus of this happening (the sufficient condition of a writer relinquishing right to material)...and this would allow us to have the necessary condition of the writer being entitled to quote freely.

This supports what Oscar did.

[WaltGrace1983]

Thought I'd chime in with some more analysis of incorrect answers:

(B) Passages are more than a few sentences long → Must cite. We don't know anything about the length of the passages (they could be one word for all we know). Yet in addition, even if we did know that all the passages are a paragraph long, this is still saying that the writer (Oscar) should still have cited the sources. Oscar admittedly says that he used the passages "without attribution."

(C) ~Published → Justified in quoting without attribution. Once again, we have no idea if the work of Ethel Myers is published or not - okay so we can probably presume that it is but we have no real indication that it is published. A book can be written but not published, no? In addition though, it says that plagiarism is "never justified," which certainly contradicts some of the principles of Oscar's statement.

(E) Okay now we are just getting crazy. We presume that Oscar didn't write Ethel Myers' book yet we have no idea if this actually happens or not. If we are giving a sufficient condition with no indication that the sufficient condition is satisfied in the stimulus, it cannot be correct.

[pacificbonito]

Please Help!

I thought the questions (5-6) were fairly easy, although I got both of them wrong answering 5.)A and 6.)D...
The misunderstanding doesn't seem to involve any contrapositives, I would have chosen answer D for question 5 but for the specific language - '_relinquishes_ his or her _exclusive right_'
Is such language justified and really correct?

I immediately, although not a lawyer, thought about patent holders having exclusivity and joined this with my own assumption (not sure) that they use this exclusivity to get royalties and other money by using their exclusive right to allow others to produce the item with their permission. Perhaps I am wrong here specifically, and likely in the larger area of working with knowledge I really don't posses.

However, in the specific I looked up "Exclusive right" on Wikipedia:

exclusive right is a de facto, non-tangible prerogative existing in law (that is, the power or, in a wider sense, right) to perform an action or acquire a benefit and to permit or deny others the right to perform the same action

Here it would seem that an exclusive right is BEING EXERCISED by granting the permission, NOT RELINQUISHED. Now that definition is specific to what Wikipedia calls 'Anglo-Saxon law', but am I really so out-of-line? Is my argumentative nature going to doom any hope at the LSAT or do I have a point?

Please Help! With all the logical hairsplitting that can occur in this test I truly do not know!

[tommywallach]

Sadly, that's just a meaning issue. "Exercise" an exclusive right would mean denying somebody else. If you were to give the right out, it would be an exception to the exclusivity.

That said, I wouldn't worry about it. Particularly language like this will not come up on your test (you see it once a lifetime, if you know what I mean), so agonizing about it just isn't worth it.

Good luck!

-t

[Mikey]

My only issue with this question, and it's the reason I chose A over D, is the fact that D says "quote", when in fact Oscar never quoted. He used someone else's work without giving them credit, but wouldn't "quoting" someone be giving them credit?

[kyliecunderwood]

My only issue with this question, and it's the reason I chose A over D, is the fact that D says "quote", when in fact Oscar never quoted. He used someone else's work without giving them credit, but wouldn't "quoting" someone be giving them credit?

Not necessarily. An unattributed quotation is still plagiarism even if it includes clear indicators (ie, quotation marks) that somebody else was responsible for the material. If Oscar put in his article something written by Myers (say, "XYZ"), but failed to include a citation giving credit to Myers, then he's still plagiarizing.

[MarkR495]

Could you look at Oscar's statement as a piece of logical reasoning? Logically set up as:

If permission given ------> ~ plagiarism (the right to quote)

In this case, then (A) would be incorrect, because it is a negation of Oscars reasoning, without reversal (the correct form of a contrapositive).

If ~ permission given ------> no right to quote passages (plagiarism)

(D) would be correct, because it has the same structure as Oscar's judgement.

If writer relinquishes exclusive right to material (permission given) --------> quote freely (the right to quote)

I believe that "entitled to quote freely" and "no right to quote" as exact opposites in this context; the same goes for "not granted permission" and "relinquishes his or her exclusive right". Are those pairs of statements equivalent opposites?

Thanks' in advance for any feedback!

[MeganL677]

Another question here:

Oscar is assuming his recent article is a private correspondence and says he's got the permission.

Yet D) says if the writer relinquish exclusive right to the material.....

Does "gave others limited permission" means "relinquish exclusive right"? I think Myers not relinquish that right completely.. or just I understand the "exclusive right" wrongly?

Help..