#14 - Every time people get what they want they feel

[eun]

My problem here is understanding the sentence "We can conclude that no one fundamentally desires anything except pleasure" to mean that people desire things to get pleasure. Is it just poor reading comprehension?

I got really stuck on this question because I kept doing this reasoning:

Get what you want Pleasure

Conclusion:

Get what you want ONLY Pleasure

My brain thought, thus, the flaw is that there are no other effects or necessary conditions for getting what you want. Then I kept looking for an answer choice where it was something like A B, thus A ONLY B.

Help!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Eun!

You have the premise right but the conclusion is slightly different than what you have.

Premise: "Every time people get what they want they feel pleasure."

Get What You Want Feel Pleasure

Conclusion: "No one fundamentally desires anything except pleasure."

Want Something Want Pleasure

The conclusion is basically that if you want something, you must want pleasure.

Put in another way, the full argument states that because you get pleasure from getting what you want, you must only want something to get pleasure. In abstract terms, because an action gives you a specific effect, that effect must be the only reason you took that action in the first place.

That matches answer choice (C): Because you get a stomachache from eating pizza, you must only eat pizza to get a stomachache.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[katnyc]

For this problem I thought it was a cause and effect problem and I thought it was also conditional. Im not sure about this but isn't "every time" a necessary condition and the word except also necessary. I am not sure if I am completely off. I also chose choice d thinking about the desire of pleasure.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi katnyc!

You're absolutely right that this stimulus involves both conditional and causal statements! "Except" is a necessary condition indicator, but you have to use the Unless Equation with "except" statements in order to diagram them correctly (the Unless Equation applies to "unless," "until," "except," and "without."

There's more about the Unless Equation here: https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid-28 ... -equation/

"Every," however, is a sufficient condition indicator, not a necessary one.

For parallel questions, don't focus on the concepts--focus on the structure of the argument. We aren't looking for something that matches "desire of pleasure." We're looking for an argument in which the premises support the conclusion in the same way as it does in the stimulus. As the explanation at the beginning of this thread states, answer choice (D) presents a time shift error. There's no time shift error in the stimulus, so that's not the answer choice we need. The premises don't support the conclusion in the same way.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey