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Question

Difficulty: HardMust Be True / Most Strongly Supported

Archivists examining medieval mercantile guilds in the Rhine Valley have established the following records:

• Every guild granted an imperial customs exemption operated at least one bonded river quay.
• Some guilds that operated bonded river quays were not permitted to mint local coinage.
• Any guild that maintained a sworn arbitration council was permitted to mint local coinage and held an imperial customs exemption.
• No guild that failed to maintain a sworn arbitration council was authorized to levy warehouse tariffs.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true?

  1. A
    Every guild that operated at least one bonded river quay held an imperial customs exemption.
  2. B
    All guilds that held an imperial customs exemption were authorized to levy warehouse tariffs.
  3. At least some guilds that operated bonded river quays were not authorized to levy warehouse tariffs.Answer
  4. D
    No guild that was permitted to mint local coinage failed to maintain a sworn arbitration council.
  5. E
    Guilds that lacked an imperial customs exemption were significantly more prone to jurisdictional trade disputes than guilds with exemptions.

Answer

At least some guilds that operated bonded river quays were not authorized to levy warehouse tariffs.
The correct answer synthesizes the existential premise with two successive contrapositives: the stimulus establishes that some quay-operating guilds lacked permission to mint coinage; lacking minting permission guarantees the absence of an arbitration council; and lacking an arbitration council guarantees that the guild was not authorized to levy warehouse tariffs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Formalize the conditional premises and quantifier statement.
Exemption → Quay; Some Quay AND NOT Minting; Council → (Minting AND Exemption); NOT Council → NOT Tariffs (equivalent to: Tariffs → Council).
Translating the stimulus into formal logical relationships clarifies necessary versus sufficient conditions and quantifiers.
2
Take the contrapositive of the council-to-minting relationship.
Since Council → Minting, it follows that NOT Minting → NOT Council.
Failing to satisfy a necessary condition guarantees the absence of the sufficient condition.
3
Chain the derived contrapositive with the tariff restriction premise.
Because NOT Council → NOT Tariffs, combining this yields NOT Minting → NOT Tariffs.
Transitive chaining establishes that any guild unable to mint coinage is strictly barred from levying warehouse tariffs.
4
Apply the existential premise to the derived chain.
There exist guilds operating bonded river quays that cannot mint coinage; therefore, those specific guilds cannot be authorized to levy warehouse tariffs.
Instantiating the existential subset into the valid conditional chain strictly guarantees the conclusion.

Key Concept

Quantifier-conditional synthesis and contrapositive chaining
Estimated Time:1m 50s
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Topics

Must Be True / Most Strongly Supported

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