#21 - Clearly, fitness consultants who smoke cigarettes

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion—SN. The correct answer choice is (E)

The conclusion here is that fitness consultants who smoke cannot help their clients become healthier. This is based on a chain of information: if someone does not care about their own health they cannot care for their clients’ health, and if they do not care for their clients’ health they cannot help their clients become healthier. The missing link in this chain is the connection between someone caring for his/her own health, and that person smoking cigarettes (note how smoking is only mentioned in the conclusion; this is a key indicator that it must be connected back to other stimulus information in order to prove the conclusion is correct). To prove this conclusion, show that someone who smokes does not care about their own health, which would allow you to follow the chain and conclude that they then cannot help their clients become healthier.

Answer choice (A): This answer choice does not address smoking cigarettes so it cannot be correct.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice does not address smoking cigarettes so it cannot be correct.

Answer choice (C): This answer choice does not address smoking cigarettes so it cannot be correct.

Answer choice (D): This answer choice is about people who do not smoke, so it does not address the new information in the conclusion (people who do smoke). Further, we need the chain to connect smoking with caring for one’s own health, which this answer does not do.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. If you take the contrapositive of this answer choice you find that anyone who smokes does not care about his or her own health, so they cannot care about their clients’ health, so they cannot help their clients become healthier (the conclusion is proven true). Note how this is different than answer choice (D) which talks about people who do not smoke, as opposed to here where we have people who care about their own health not smoking (so people who do smoke do not care for their own health).

[nzLSAT]

Hi,

I was in between A and E and, after a long debate, ultimately chose A. Can you provide a more in-depth explanation as to how I could easily choose between these two in a more efficient way for test day?

[Bob O'Halloran]

Hi NZ,
Thank you for the question.

When we have a justify the conclusion question, we want to try and identify the missing link in the argument.
If you notice the first statement talks about smoking. Then the second statement talks about caring about one's health. Recognizing that leap gives us an excellent pre-phase of the answer we are looking for:

Something that connects smoking and caring about one's health.

Having this in mind helps us quickly identify (E) as the correct answer.

Answer choice (A) doesn't mention smoking at all and therefore does help us make the needed connection.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
Bob

[h3voc007]

Thank you so much for the explanation, Bob. All makes perfect sense excluding the part that I was under the impression the conclusion has to be proven by the premises. So, the structure is PREMISES (therefore) ----> CONCLUSION.

Accordingly, what seems to be the case for me is that NOT CARE (about own health or clients' health) -----> SMOKE applies here to link the premises and the conclusion.

This is the contrapositive of answer D, while answer E essentially has the opposite structure: CONCLUSION ----> PREMISE

Would you be able to help me what I am getting wrong here?

[atierney]

Hello,

So this question is pretty tricky and not just because of the lengthy chain at it core. I think it would be helpful to first clearly lay out the chain.

The conclusion is stated in the first sentence. If you, as a fitness consultant, smoke, then you cannot help you clients.

The sufficient condition is Smoke (fitness consultants WHO smoke) and the necessary condition is NOT help.

So that would be written as Smoke ----->NOT Help. The contrapositive of this would Help -----> NOT Smoke. In other words, if you want to help your clients, then you can't smoke.

Now, I would argue that, given what a multitude of studies have demonstrated to us about smoking, that conclusion and its contrapositive can pretty much be taken as a given. But wait! There's more! And what follows (in the stimulus) are the premises that seek to convince us of this conclusion.

So we're first given this conditional: NOT care about own health ----> NOT care clients' health

Then, we're told a connecting conditional: NOT care about client's health -----> NOT help clients.

Thus, we see the connection in the form of A--->B, B--->C, that if NOT care about own health----> NOT help clients.

But remember, the conclusion was if Smoke----->NOT help clients. So, as with all justify the conclusion questions, we're looking to connect the new information in the conclusion with what we're given in the premises.

Thus we need something with a sufficient condition of if Smoke and a necessary condition of NOT care about own health, because this is where the argument stopped in conditional chain of the premises. And E does this in contrapositive form. If care about own health -----> NOT Smoke, or if Smoke----> NOT care about own health. Thus, it's the correct answer (and correct contrapositive).

Now, this was a long-winded (and possibly redundant) way to get to your point about "Accordingly, what seems to be the case for me is that NOT CARE (about own health or clients' health) -----> SMOKE applies here to link the premises and the conclusion."

Notice that this is a Mistaken Reversal of the correct contrapositive. If SMOKE---->NOT care about own health, rather the other way around. Notice also that, if you were just to think about the statements, without diagramming, could we really say that you must care about your own health if the only thing you do is not smoke? I mean, honestly, there are a lot of other unhealthy things you can do!

All of this to say I'm not sure what led you to that error (and let me say, it's a common one to make; this is a tough question), but the important point is to be able to write out the conditional chain and recognize the correct form of the missing link to get to the conclusion. This is essential to choosing E (the correct form) over D, which is the mistaken reversal of the correct contrapositive.

Let me know if you have further questions.

[olenka.ballena@macaulay.cuny.edu]

Hi Powerscore,

I was able to narrow down between E and D. I can now realize how D is the mistaken reversal of the contrapositive of the conclusion, but how am I supposed to know to make that connection? This is how I came to my understanding of D's contrapositive being the mistaken reversal of the conclusion, please let me know whether it makes sense or not.

The conclusion is smoke --> NOT help clients become healthier. So the contrapositive is HELP clients become healthier --> NOT smoke.

D can be diagrammed as NOT SMOKE --> cares about health of others (clients), contrapositive NOT care about clients' health --> smoke.

So in order to realize that D's contrapositive is a MR of the conclusion, do you have to assume that since you have NOT care about clients' health, that you also have NOT help clients become healthier because of the premises (which lay out NOT care about clients health --> NOT help clients become healthier)?

I'm confused because unless you make the inference that NOT caring about clients health --> smoke is also NOT helping clients become healthier --> smoke, how can you realize that D's contrapositive is a MR of the conclusion? I'm just trying to find out how I could've correctly eliminated D.

Hello,

So this question is pretty tricky and not just because of the lengthy chain at it core. I think it would be helpful to first clearly lay out the chain.

The conclusion is stated in the first sentence. If you, as a fitness consultant, smoke, then you cannot help you clients.

The sufficient condition is Smoke (fitness consultants WHO smoke) and the necessary condition is NOT help.

So that would be written as Smoke ----->NOT Help. The contrapositive of this would Help -----> NOT Smoke. In other words, if you want to help your clients, then you can't smoke.

Now, I would argue that, given what a multitude of studies have demonstrated to us about smoking, that conclusion and its contrapositive can pretty much be taken as a given. But wait! There's more! And what follows (in the stimulus) are the premises that seek to convince us of this conclusion.

So we're first given this conditional: NOT care about own health ----> NOT care clients' health

Then, we're told a connecting conditional: NOT care about client's health -----> NOT help clients.

Thus, we see the connection in the form of A--->B, B--->C, that if NOT care about own health----> NOT help clients.

But remember, the conclusion was if Smoke----->NOT help clients. So, as with all justify the conclusion questions, we're looking to connect the new information in the conclusion with what we're given in the premises.

Thus we need something with a sufficient condition of if Smoke and a necessary condition of NOT care about own health, because this is where the argument stopped in conditional chain of the premises. And E does this in contrapositive form. If care about own health -----> NOT Smoke, or if Smoke----> NOT care about own health. Thus, it's the correct answer (and correct contrapositive).

Now, this was a long-winded (and possibly redundant) way to get to your point about "Accordingly, what seems to be the case for me is that NOT CARE (about own health or clients' health) -----> SMOKE applies here to link the premises and the conclusion."

Notice that this is a Mistaken Reversal of the correct contrapositive. If SMOKE---->NOT care about own health, rather the other way around. Notice also that, if you were just to think about the statements, without diagramming, could we really say that you must care about your own health if the only thing you do is not smoke? I mean, honestly, there are a lot of other unhealthy things you can do!

All of this to say I'm not sure what led you to that error (and let me say, it's a common one to make; this is a tough question), but the important point is to be able to write out the conditional chain and recognize the correct form of the missing link to get to the conclusion. This is essential to choosing E (the correct form) over D, which is the mistaken reversal of the correct contrapositive.

Let me know if you have further questions.

[Adam Tyson]

There is a shorter, simpler way to eliminate answer D, Olenka, and that is to recognize that it has a sufficient condition of NOT smoking, which cannot possibly match our prephrase in which the sufficient condition is smoking. Regardless of whatever else happens in that answer, no matter what necessary condition it has, it's immediately wrong because the sufficient condition is the opposite of the one we need it to be!