I'm thinking of taking the LSAT. And, to be honest, I mostly want to take it for fun. I don't know if I really want to go to Law School. I don't really know much about it. I know that I don't want to be done with school once I graduate, but that's about all I can say for sure.
No, the LSAT is strictly something that seems fun to me. And challenging. But the kind of challenging that stimulates and inspires, as opposed to the kind that makes you want to tear out your hair.
Why do I think this test will be fun? It is a test, after all. Because I like logic problems. They're like math, without the math. The fun part of math, if there is such a thing.
And I like them a lot. I remember when I was young and we created these weird diagrams to solve problems. Like Jon, Mary, Stew, and Connor were in three races. Mary wasn't first when Stew was third. Connor didn't finish last. And Jon never beat Stew. Who was second?
This is, of course, not an accurate problem because it is off the top of my head and probably would only yield nonsense.
But, you get the idea of the questions that were asked.
You then drew a chart, and the more variables the more complicated it became. The one I described would be pretty simple, a more complicated one would be:
Mary, Kyle, and Nick all have cars. The cars are red, blue, and green. Mary's car is the fastest. Kyle has a blue car. Nick's car is not the slowest. The green car is the slowest. And then it would ask something like, who drives the slowest car?
Those graphs and these questions are fun for me. I like them. I like doing them. Does that make me crazy? Probably not. Am I still crazy? Probably, but for other reasons.
Anyway, I was looking over questions on a practice LSAT and I think the test is cheating people. I'm in a Logic and Reasoning class, and the subject has come up in other Philosophy classes, and one of the things that comes up are formally valid arguments.
A formally valid argument has to fit into a particular mold, because these molds show what argument forms work ALL THE TIME. If there is an example where it isn't true, then it is logically invalid.
The two most basic forms are Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens.
Modus Ponens: If A leads to B, and A is happening, then B is happening. (If you stub your toe, your toe will hurt. You stubbed your toe, so your toe hurts.)
Modus Tollens: If A leads to B, and B is not happening, then A could not be happening. (If it rains, the ground will be wet. But the ground isn't wet, so it couldn't be raining.)
Get it?
One of the most common mistakes with these (called a logical fallacy) is assuming that not A, means not B. (If it is raining then the ground will be wet. It isn't raining so the ground won't be wet. - BUT what about sprinklers, snow, hoses, the Ice Challenge, etc).
Other things can lead to B.
But on there are questions that go against this.
For example, N cannot be selected unless L is selected. So, if N, then L. Because if there is an N, there will always be an L. But it doesn't say that it goes both ways to mean both, if there is an L there is an N and if there is an N there is an L.
And yet, there were three questions of the six that I was looking at in the practice test that relied on this assumption that it goes both ways to get the answer. Some of these answers would be wrong if it wasn't true.
And according to the practice test, a lot of people do poorly on these questions and I think that THIS is why. From the wording, they are going against what we are taught in school about logic and how it works, because it gives us something that can be put into a specific rule and then it breaks that rule.
Confusing, but in an interesting way. I mean, clearly. I am blogging about it, so it interests me. And now I know to watch for it. And other potential trick questions.
