PrepTest 143

Incorrect. not Social integrity → not Rule of law. This answer is the reverse/negation of the answer we're looking for. Even without the anticipation, diagramming this out should show that the position of not Rule of law can't match up with the conclusion of the argument.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
not Social integrity → not Individual freedom
not Social integrity → not Pursuing the good life
Therefore: not Rule of law → not Individual freedom

Answer Anticipation:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise arguments frequently feature conditional logic, and we need to work to build a chain with the premises and correct answer that proves the conclusion. One way to do that is to start with the terms in the conclusion and start "building" a chain using the premises.

Before we start doing that, a note on the diagrams—we treated "without" as we do "unless"—think about it as "if not," and diagram accordingly. If you treated that conditional word using a different process (it introduces the necessary and you negate the sufficient), you should have ended up with the contrapositives of our statements, which is fine!

Back to the question at hand—we need to build a chain that connects not Rule of law to not Individual freedom. not Rule of law doesn't show up in the premises, so it'll show up in the correct answer and we should start our analysis by building to not Individual freedom with the premises.

There is something sufficient to build to not Individual freedom—not Social integrity. So our chain is looking like:

not Rule of law → ???? → not Social integrity → not Individual freedom

And here, something interesting happens: there's nothing that guarantees not Social integrity. In fact, the second conditional shares that as a sufficient condition with the first conditional. At this point, you should go back to check that you diagrammed it correctly—however, you did. Here, that second conditional forms a second chain that doesn't get us closer to proving the conclusion—it ends up being irrelevant. Even if we connect not Pursue the good life to not Individual freedom, there's nothing connecting it all to not Rule of law.

Instead, we're left with our chain from above:

not Rule of law → ???? → not Social integrity → not Individual freedom

which means the correct answer is going to have to connect not Rule of law with not Social integrity:

not Rule of law → not Social integrity
Social integrity → Rule of law

Answer Explanation:
not Rule of law → not Social integrity. This answer matches our anticipation. If no rule of law means no social integrity, and no social integrity means no individual freedom, then the conclusion holds.

Key Takeaway:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise questions will usually use all premises (along with the answer) in reaching the conclusion—but not always. If you truly believe there's an extraneous premise—even in a question that's structured around conditional logic—then you could be right, and you should keep working through the answer choices until that's proven wrong.

Incorrect. not Rule of law → not Pursue good life. This answer can't form a chain with the second premise, so it doesn't build on the argument.

Incorrect. This answer is some permutation of the first conditional premise, so it doesn't build to the conclusion.

Incorrect. not Individual freedom → not Rule of law. This answer is a reversal of the conclusion, so it doesn't serve to justify it.