Q14 - Human beings can live happily

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Inference (most strongly supported)

Break down the Stimulus:
Read for Conditional / Causal / Comparative / Quantitative. The first sentence is conditional: Living happily --requires--> a society that primarily cares about love and friendship. The second sentence is comparing: economic needs don't need that love/friendship stuff. (Then there's an example, which is usually just filler).

Any prephrase?
The conclusion begins "Human beings" … and we want an idea that synthesizes what we learned by combining the two facts provided. Humans need love and friendship in order to be happy, but don't need that stuff to meet economic needs. Maybe we could say "happiness requires more than just meeting economic needs?"

Answer choice analysis:
A) Extreme. "only" is conditional. This says "happiness ---requires---> NOT caring about economics". We weren't told anything like that.

B) Extreme. "unless" is conditional. This says "happiness ---requires---> having economic needs satisfied". We weren't told anything like that. It sounded more like satisfying happiness-needs and satisfying economic needs were two different things.

C) Out of scope. "Interactions with family and close friends" hints at the idea of "love and friendship", but we can't accept that those are interchangeable. After all, you could have ECONOMIC "interactions with family and close friends". Maybe THOSE would satisfy your economic needs.

D) Moderate sounding. And it's supportable. We know that you can meet economic needs without having achieved all that love/friendship stuff, but you need that stuff in order to achieve happiness.

E) Extreme. "unless". This says "Satisfying your economic needs ---requires---> that you're happy". This sounds like the opposite of the stimulus, which told us that satisfying economic needs does NOT require that happiness stuff.

The correct answer is D.

Takeaway/Pattern: Inference tests our ability to combine multiple facts. When you do a Logical Completion inference, you're almost always pulling together the two threads of thought that were brought up (in the safest, most conservative language they're offering). Here, we're trying to bring together a sentence about happiness and one about economic needs. This Inference question involved both Conditional (only) and Comparative (yet) language.

#officialexplanation

[clarafok]

hello,

so i have a feeling i'm not getting the logic straight...

live happily -> love + friendship = primary motives for action
economic needs -> ~(love + friendship = primary motives for action)

is that right?

thanks in advance!

[sbuzzetto10]

I think the key in this argument is that happiness requires love and friendship as primary motives (so without these, happiness is not possible) but economic needs do NOT require love and friendship as primary motives (so without these, economic utility can be possible)

I think you confused the logic with economic needs.

That being said, the only choice that is logically supported is D
human beings "can satisfy their basic economic needs without obtaining happiness"

If happiness is possible for humans only when love and friendship are primary motives, and economic needs can be satisfied even when love and friendship are not primary motives, then this must mean it's possible to satisfy economic needs while not obtaining happiness

think: -L and -F --> -H
but -L and -F don't mean -E

Hope this helps and isn't confusing. I literally just replied with my thought process haha!

[Shiggins]

Sbuzzetto10, I believe I came with the same logic with you while doing this problem.

Yet economic needs can be satisfied in the absence of this
condition( love and friendship as primary motives)

I just want to go over this phrase. This phrase means that the absence of love and friendship is sufficient to bring about Economic needs.

I just want to clarify another term. which is saying something is insufficient to bring about a requirement.

Would it be wrong to say that Love&friendship are insufficient to bring about economic needs. I believe that would be diagrammed: Love and Friendship -> ~Economic Needs

( I believe when something is stated as insufficient it it not a true conditional, it is similar to saying something can or could)

That is different from the what is stated in the stimulus which is:
~L nor ~F -> Economic needs

If what I wrote is correct then, I believe it would be wrong to label L & F as insufficient for economic needs. I believe insufficient leaves only a possibility bc the insufficient term by itself is not enough to bring about the necessary. The insufficient term in conjunction with something else can bring about the necessary. If I did I would just be using a flaw of negation in sufficient and necessary terms.

If anyone could correct, amend, clarify, much appreciated.

[ohthatpatrick]

Hey, Shiggins.

I think you were making conditionals where there really weren't any.

You said:
Yet economic needs can be satisfied in the absence of this condition( love and friendship as primary motives)

I just want to go over this phrase. This phrase means that the absence of love and friendship is sufficient to bring about Economic needs.
~L nor ~F -> Economic needs

That is not accurate. The bold phrase (from the stimulus) is NOT a conditional statement. Saying that something "can, could, may, might" happen is never a conditional statement.

Let me give you a quick, parallel example:
Wealth can be obtained in the absence of winning the lottery.

The way you were interpreting the logic of this type of sentence is that the absence of winning the lottery is sufficient to bring about wealth.

or,
~Win the lottery --> wealth

That doesn't make sense, right?

What both of these statements are really saying is that Thing A is not NECESSARY to obtaining Thing B. Saying something isn't necessary doesn't tell you anything about whether something is or isn't sufficient.

You also said:
Would it be wrong to say that Love&friendship are insufficient to bring about economic needs. I believe that would be diagrammed: Love and Friendship -> ~Economic Needs

It would be wrong to say that, and if we DID say they were insufficient, it would be wrong to try to diagram that fact.

As you said just a second later:
( I believe when something is stated as insufficient it it not a true conditional, it is similar to saying something can or could)

You are correct. Knowing something is insufficient is NOT something you could diagram conditionally. (Just as knowing something is not necessary is NOT something you could diagram conditionally)

We know that Love&friendship are not necessary to satisfy economic needs. That tells us nothing about whether or not they're sufficient/insufficient to bring about economic needs.

Consider these examples:
Winning the lottery isn't necessary to become rich.
(But winning the lottery is still sufficient to make you rich.)

Being a governor isn't necessary to become President.
(And being a governor isn't sufficient to make you President either. Not being a governor also isn't sufficient to make you President.)

So, again, knowing something isn't required doesn't tell you anything about whether it is or isn't sufficient (nor does it tell you that the absence of that something is sufficient for anything).

You also wrote:
I just want to clarify another term. which is saying something is insufficient to bring about a requirement.

We probably don't want to use 'insufficient' and 'requirement' in the same sentence. It's jumbling together two separate issues.

Let's either talk of something being insufficient to bring about a certain result, or talk of something being required to allow something else to be true.

You also wrote:
If what I wrote is correct then, I believe it would be wrong to label L & F as insufficient for economic needs. I believe insufficient leaves only a possibility bc the insufficient term by itself is not enough to bring about the necessary. The insufficient term in conjunction with something else can bring about the necessary. If I did I would just be using a flaw of negation in sufficient and necessary terms.

You are correct in saying that it's wrong to say L&F are insufficient for economic needs, but it has nothing to do with flawed negation.

You were thinking that the 2nd sentence of the stimulus says this:

~L nor ~F -> Economic needs

and you were thinking that saying that L&F are insufficient to Economic Needs would be diagrammed like this:

Love and Friendship -> ~Economic Needs

I see how comparing those two conditional statements had you thinking in terms of flawed negations.

The problem with this thinking, though, as I hope I've made clear, is that the 2nd sentence of the stimulus is NOT conditional logic. Similarly, saying that L&F are insufficient to bring about Economic Needs is NOT conditional logic.

So neither one of those conditional statements you have in mind is valid.

The reason the 1st sentence IS conditional logic is because it uses the conditional trigger word "only".

Try to assign conditional logic only if you see conditional trigger words (if, then, when, only, only if, unless, all, each, any, all, requires, guarantees, ensures, implies, leads to, etc.)

Let me know if any of that remains confusing.

[Shiggins]

Thank you Patrick, it makes sense. I always tried to force a diagram on something that said not sufficient. I should of just remembered that it is not a strong relationship like how can or could is not a strong relationship. From can or could there is no definite conclusion. Thank you.