Theme: Definitions

More Contrasts– Developing definitions through contrasts

In addition to identifying the key argument, one of our principle tasks in RC passages is to build up accurate definitions throughout the passage. Often, the LSAT is nice enough to just give us a straightforward definition! In those cases, make sure that you really understand what the definition means. There are some moments in RC passages where we can skim a bit faster (I’m not going to sit and try to memorize this list of 5 movies you’re giving me as an example of something) but with definitions, it is always a good idea to spend that little bit of extra time making sure you understand it.

Defining things, like outlining arguments, can often be done through contrast. Things are quite often defined against other things in LSAT passages, and it is our job to both build up both positive definitions (in which things are directly defined or described) and negative definitions, where we infer what one thing is not by understanding what its contrast is.

Consider the following:

Blue whales and seals may have more similarities than one might first guess. They are both mammals and breathe oxygen. But blue whales, unlike seals, live exclusively in water and can grow to be bigger than three school buses. Seals, however, feed on larger prey than the blue whale, eating squid, crustaceans, molluscs, and a variety of fish; including, rockfish, herring, flounder, salmon, hake, and sand lance.

Whales are defined in contrast to what seals are not, so we should have some kind of mental model about each animal that reflects something like the following:

Blue whales

seals

Mammals Breathe oxygen Exclusively in water Can grow to huge sizes Don’t know what they eat, but whatever it is has to be smaller than molluscs

Mammals Breathe oxygen Don’t live exclusively in water ( means seals sometimes live on land ) Don’t grow to be as big as blue whales / not three school buses (how big do they get?) Eat larger prey and fish

There are no rows in this table

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Note what we are doing is both constructing definitions positively (they are both mammals and breathe oxygen) and negatively by making inferences through contrasts.

This is a really straightforward example, but actively building up these definitions and mental models can really help make sense of confusing passages! Looking for the way that things are defined against each other can help us identify key details that we might otherwise have skimmed over, and it is a favorite practice of LSAT test makers to ask questions about these types of inferences.

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