Sonya: Anyone who lives without constant awareness of the fragility an

Question

Sonya: Anyone who lives without constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of human life has a mind clouded by illusion. Yet those people who are perpetually cognizant of the fragility and precariousness of human life surely taint their emotional outlook on existence.

Sonya’s statements, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

(A) Anyone who places a higher priority on maintaining a positive emotional outlook than on dispelling illusion will be completely unaware of the fragility and precariousness of human life.
(B) Either no one has a tainted emotional outlook on existence, or no one has a mind clouded by illusion.
(C) It is impossible for anyone to live without some degree of self-deception.
(D) Everyone whose emotional outlook on existence is untainted has a mind clouded by illusion.
(E) It is better to be aware of the fragility and precariousness of human life than to have an untainted emotional outlook on existence.

Source  :  LSAT PrepTest 50 Q#15

The stimulus of this inference question boils down to two statements:

No constant awareness --> clouded mind
Constant awareness --> tainted emotion

Pretty bleak!

We can combine these statements by using the contrapositive of the second one:

Not tainted emotions --> Not constant awareness --> clouded mind

And that's what (D) is based upon.

(A) is out of scope - we're not interested in folks' priorities.

(B) is tempting, however the stimulus doesn't suggest that everyone is in one group or another. There's no reason to believe that some people could have constant awareness while others don't.

(C) is out of scope - self-deception? Tempting if you though a mind clouded by illusion is a case of self-deception. But even if that were true, couldn't there be some folks that have constant awareness and thus none of this illusion/self-deception?

(E) is about what's better? No opinions in the stimulus, no opinion in any inference.

GMATNinja · Accepted Answer

Thanks  mostasha !

I think you clearly understand what's going on here, but I'd like to use this opportunity to point out the pitfalls that can arise when diagramming a sentence: namely, losing key details in the process. For example, I'd replace "No awareness" in step #1 with "No CONSTANT awareness." That little word "constant" entirely changes the meaning. The passage says that if you don't live with  constant  awareness, then your mind will be clouded by illusion. So even someone with SOME awareness would still have a mind clouded by illusion to some degree. Living with a constant awareness is NECESSARY if you don't want to have a mind clouded by illusion. Living WITHOUT constant awareness is SUFFICIENT for having a mind clouded by illusion. (And we'll say much more about this necessary vs. sufficient business in an upcoming  Topic of the Week .)

Similarly, the passage does not say that " too much  awareness" causes a tainted emotional outlook; rather, the passage says that having CONSTANT awareness (or being "perpetually cognizant") will lead to a tainted emotional outlook. So what if someone is OFTEN cognizant of the fragility and precariousness of human life? Will that person have a tainted emotional outlook? We can't be sure, based on the information in the passage. We only know that being CONSTANTLY cognizant will cause a tainted emotional outlook.

To summarize...

If you have a constant awareness, you will have a tainted emotional outlook, but your mind will not be clouded by illusion. 
 If you do NOT have a constant awareness, your mind WILL be clouded by illusion, but you  may  not have a tainted emotional outlook.

Referring to the first bullet point, anyone with a constant awareness WILL have a tainted emotional outlook. Thus, anyone WITHOUT a tainted emotional outlook must NOT have a constant awareness. If you do not have a constant awareness, then, referring to the second bullet point, your mind will be clouded by illusion.

Choice (D) is the clear answer.

mostasha · Answer

I believe this one can be tackled using some cause and effect diagramming and the principle of contrapositive.

The principle states if "cause" causes the "Effect" or in other words C --> E, then the only inference that you can make in Not E --> Not C. This is called the contrapositive.

Now in this question, I diagrammed it in this manner:

#1) No awareness --> Illusion
#2) Too much awareness --> Tainted emotions

Take contrapositive of #2, No emotions --> No awareness --> Illusion.

This is exactly what choice D says.

CEdward · Answer

C was really tempting. But, alas, the answer is D.

Sonya: Anyone who lives without constant awareness of the fragility and precariousness of human life has a mind clouded by illusion. Yet those people who are perpetually cognizant of the fragility and precariousness of human life surely taint their emotional outlook on existence.

Sonya’s statements, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

(A) Anyone who places a higher priority on maintaining a positive emotional outlook than on dispelling illusion will be  completely unaware  of the fragility and precariousness of human life. X
This takes things too far.
(B)  Either no one has a tainted emotional outlook on existence, or no one has a mind clouded by illusion . X
This contradicts the passage, which says that both types of people exist..not just one. 
(C) It is impossible for anyone to live without some degree of  self-deception . X
The problem with this choice is 'self-deception'...I don't think either 'illusion' or 'emotional taintedness' necessarily means 'self-deception'.
(D) Everyone whose emotional outlook on existence is untainted has a mind clouded by illusion. CORRECT.
The sample space includes two types of people: those without constant awareness (these people are clouded by illusion) and those with constant awareness (these people have a tainted emotional outlook). So you're either one or the other.
(E) It is  better  to be aware of the fragility and precariousness of human life than to have an untainted emotional outlook on existence. X
Nothing in the passage suggests that one is better than the other...perhaps they are both equally bad.

Anandanwar · Answer

Hello,

Can someone please clear this?
The argument mentions people who live with constant awareness of fragility and precariousness of human life and people who live without constant awareness of fragility and precariousness of human life.

But it does not consider people who live with constant awareness of fragility of human life but without constant awareness of precariousness of human life.
Similarly it does not consider people who live with constant awareness of precariousness of human life but without constant awareness of fragility of human life.

According to this Choice D can be rejected.

Could you please tell me where I have gone wrong?
Regards,
Ankit

DmitryFarber · Answer

Anandanwar

Think of it this way. The author is describing a kind of awareness, and showing what happens if you do or don't have that kind of awareness. This is a binary situation: everyone either DOES or DOES NOT have the kind of awareness described, just like everyone either MEETS or DOES NOT MEET the listed requirements for a job. If you are missing one piece of the awareness, then you're in the DOES NOT category. You can't have an awareness of X and Y if you aren't aware of Y. In conditional logic terms, you could say ~Y -> ~(X+Y).

Also, I wouldn't be too quick to split the awareness into two types, anyway. That's partly because the author didn't do so--they described one awareness of two things--but also because the ideas are very highly related. In this context, "fragility" and "precariousness" are practically synonyms. In both cases, they imply that human life is easily ended, so it would be hard to make a case that we needed to consider people who were aware of F but not P, or vice versa. In any case, if this were possible, these people would still land under DOES NOT, since they wouldn't meet the author's stated criteria.

Sonya: Anyone who lives without constant awareness of the fragility an

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