"Most" "some" and "many" in conditional statements

[lunalondon]

Hello PowerScore,

I was wondering if I could get a bit of help with "most" "some" and "many" in conditional statements. From what I have understood, conditionality creates absolute relationships which the words above would not seem to account for. How can we write something like "most fruits are edible" for example? How do we account for those fruits that are not edible within a conditional statement?

I'm taking the On Demand course and can't seem to find an explanation to this in the course books... Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[Kristina Moen]

Hi Luna,

Great question. I'm glad to see that you understand that a sentence like "most fruits are edible" does not create an airtight conditional relationship. That sentence could mean that some fruits are not edible. Conditional relationships imply that one thing ALWAYS happens with another thing. On this test, "most" just means more than half. And "some" just means one or more. It sounds like your question is about how to diagram those relationships.

Although in the course we cover conditional reasoning extensively, we also have a virtual module and analysis on formal logic in the Lesson 8 Lesson and Homework Supplements in the Online Student Center. We provided it in the Online Student Center and not part of the course because formal logic is not a big element of this test. The typical LSAT contains only one to three formal logic problems. However, understanding how to diagram formal logic can be helpful on those questions. One quick'n'dirty method is to write "m" or "s" above the arrow. For example, Fruits Edible. This tells you that there is a relationship, but it's not conditional. The formal logic module will teach you more about the inferences you can make when you combine formal logic statements.

[lunalondon]

Thank you Kristina! Yes, its more about diagramming the relationships. So, for the example used, would it be accurate to say:

Fruits edible

Contrapositive: Fruits edible ?

Thank you!

[Charlie Melman]

Hi Luna,

Your first statement is correct, but you cannot take the contrapositive of "most" statements. Consider this: If it's not edible, can we say anything about whether or not it's a fruit? Maybe; it depends on how many edible things are fruits, and we don't know that.