NOTE TO SELF: Throw away all understanding or logic you may have of what is in the text. What you have in front of you is simply that.
Premise: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
Conclusion: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people
Okay, well, we know that not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. why? they dont say since their conclusion is "Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people." I guess logically that is correct, but there is absolutely nothing supporting this conclusion. There, it is flawed. Now if the premise were to say something along the lines of "Tigers are not suitable to keep as a pet, since previous owners ended up getting mauled" then it would absolutely support the conclusion!
“Premise”: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
“Conclusion”: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
The way I understand it:
This premise does not make the conclusion more likely to be true. In other words, tigers are NOT very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people BECAUSE not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
@SarahShaver something i read in the loophole that helped is that we should all assume the premises are true and not question them, only attack the relationship between them and the conclusion the stimulus makes
“Premise”: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. “Conclusion”: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
This argument is missing a premise that supports the conclusion. If there was a premise stating “tigers are mammals that have been kept as pets, but it’s ended in disaster every time because the tigers kept violently killing their owners” —> well then that does segue into a main point conclusion where we can see that tigers are aggressive and cause harm to people. Without that connecting premise though, the argument is flawed when presented in that direction.
Does that make sense to yall? It’s how I interpreted this example and hopefully it helped someone else
@monmon I see what your saying but I think you can safely assume commonly accepted characteristics, e.g., tigers are powerful predators and not domesticated. Not every single detail will be provided on the test or in life/practice. But, from a strict formal logic stand point, you're not wrong. But that's why the LSAT is not 1:1 with formal logic.
A small clarification: defining support only as ‘increasing the likelihood’ doesn’t rule out simple probabilistic increases. Under that broad definition, the reverse order isn’t a perfect counterexample to "providing support" as defined as "increasing the liklihood of truth"), because it does increase the likelihood that tigers are dangerous.
So here: "Does that “premise” make it more likely that “tigers are very aggressive” or that “tigers can cause serious injury to people”? No, I don’t think so."
But doesn't it? In a world where all mammals are suitable pets, tigers being dangerous has zero probability; in a world where some mammals aren’t suitable pets, that probability is non-zero. So as stated, the definition of support doesn’t fully exclude this case since likelihood does increase in the reverse direction too.
Might be helpful to address this because I think the way i positioned it above would get you in to trouble on the LSAT and it's not unreasonable someone might wonder that, "hey isn't it more likely tigers are dangerous in a world that NOT all mammals are suitable pets than in a one where all mammals ARE suitable pets."
@JBOWLN Ok thank you. This is where my brain was getting confused. What about this- some, all, zero. Some means could include Tigers, except the premise details helps to include them in the conclusion. If it said, tigers are delightful and cuddly, it would make a little less sense because why would that not be a suitable characteristic to desire?
@JBOWLN do they test on the LSAT in such a way for non-zero or partial support? like I see what you're saying it didn't say tigers make great pets and then it's that they are dangerous, but even then maybe someone needs a dangerous pet... maybe it goes back to relationship in regards to relating and relativeness, what relates more/the most
@LiztheB no, I don't think the LSAT deals with simple probability-based relations unless the questions specifically sets it up as such and I think they will be explicit in that case (they will use the exact words, like icnrease probably, non-zero, etc.)
But realistically for most questions, I would call what the LSAT uses as "relevance based on the explicit content." In other words, my objection is correct in strict probability terms, where any statement that raises likelihood even slightly counts as support. But on the LSAT, support depends on the content of the premise providing a reason for that specific conclusion, not just logical compatibility. “Tigers are dangerous” contains content that directly explains why some mammals aren’t suitable pets, while “some mammals aren’t suitable pets” contains no content specifically pointing to tigers. So LSAT support requires content-based relevance, not merely a technical increase in probability.
TO figure out whether there is support between a set of claims
Claim 1 Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
Claim 2 Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
In this case I feel claim one increases the likelihood of the truth of claim 2 more than the other way around because claim is true but could just be true in the sense of a a koala probably wouldn't be a suitable pet.
Not sure if this will help people, but how I think of it is that one (the conclusion) is a statement, it's blunt and makes a clear point. the support (premise) is the evidence that supports it. In the Ex. about the tiger, the most blunt point is that some mammals aren't a good pet. The evidence to back this up (the knitty gritty) is like...well, look at a fricken tiger! They can't be a pet.
hope this is helpful to some extent.
there are also indicator words for conclusion + premise (use sparingly) but I assume we'll get to it
I understand the idea that the claims must support one another to increase the likelihood of it being true, however, in the next lesson it states that order doesn't matter. I guess where I am confused is if order doesn't matter, then how do we determine that the conclusion + premise relationship is:
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. Premise: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
and not the other way around?
Am I thinking too deeply into this part and in the real test I should just assume what the conclusion is and what the premise is regardless of order?
@AprilSim I would love a more qualified person to correct me, but I have an idea as to what the answer may be.
Support = Increase likelihood of truth.
Premise: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
If the conclusion is supported (catcher) by the premise then the order is correct. If the conclusion is not supported by the premise then the order is incorrect. The premise in this order increases the likelihood of truth. Whereas the other order does not.
@AprilSim The best way I think about it — and the way I've been taught to tackle this — is to think about what point the author is trying to make (conclusion) and why (premise).
What is the point of this passage? Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet (conclusion)., why?Because tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people (premise)
Is this a good example, without defining "suitable pet"? No. Fish are pets, they are in a bowl, and we never touch them. If someone's perception of a pet is something you cage and look at - a Tiger is a suitable pet. Is this a possible inconsistency with test writers? The world imagined by test writers may themselves come with assumptions and in some cases lack of assumptions. On another question the word "suitable" may be interrogated instead of assumed. Interesting and annoying.
@SeanTucker I think that maybe they (hopefully) err on the side of caution and go with what a bear minimum (lol pun) would be- it is reasonable that someone who could seriously injure us through their aggression would not be an ideal being to take care for on na individual basis.
@SeanTucker this is why standardized tests are not universal to all, like lived experiences and "what is the truth", so in a way there is the lived experiences of the test writers that have to be taken into account and probably also why some questions are better than others...
@KhangaiChinzorig that's my main takeaway from this. Train your brain to take the writers argument at face value and not to fall into the traps of what we know from our knowledge of the world.
A trick I learned from an LSAT tutor is the "why, because" test. The why is the conclusion, the because is your premise. For example: "Blue and red make purple. Purple is on the spectrum of red and blue is used to deepen and shift red to a dark lilac hue." So, why do blue and red make purple? Because blue changes how red functions. While I am not an LSAT tutor, I do have a Discord study group if anyone would like to join (or to play MC lol): https://discord.gg/b8XaYkZHxk
So, from what I gathered in this topic, we have to concentrate on the argument itself and to not think about the real reality, but rather to think about the concept of the argument itself reality.
I'm confused about our application of the definition of "support".
We said A supports B iff A increases the likelihood of B. But in probability theory, this relation is always symmetric: if A supports B, then B supports A (by the same ratio, according to Bayes' theorem).
In the tiger example, the conclusion does actually support the premise: to see this, note that if all mammals were suitable pets, it would be pretty unlikely for tigers to be maiming humans.
So I'm wondering how to reconcile this with the directional arrows between premise and conclusion, the different words used, etc.
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147 comments
If one claim is true, will it increase the likelihood that the other claim is true? is what i got correct me if im wrong.
NOTE TO SELF: Throw away all understanding or logic you may have of what is in the text. What you have in front of you is simply that.
Premise: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
Conclusion: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people
Okay, well, we know that not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. why? they dont say since their conclusion is "Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people." I guess logically that is correct, but there is absolutely nothing supporting this conclusion. There, it is flawed. Now if the premise were to say something along the lines of "Tigers are not suitable to keep as a pet, since previous owners ended up getting mauled" then it would absolutely support the conclusion!
so essentially, i am throwing out all logic and understanding and basing my knowledge only on the information at hand? interesting.
@GDatria715 This is exactly what I had gathered as well! very interesting indeed.
“Premise”: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
“Conclusion”: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
The way I understand it:
This premise does not make the conclusion more likely to be true. In other words, tigers are NOT very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people BECAUSE not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
Hope that clears up any confusion.
Premise - "The parent who throws support."
Conclusion- "The child who needs support"
The framing of “support” meaning “to make more likely to be true” unlocked something in my brain.
The only conclusion I'd like to encounter is finishing the LSAT
So.... If the claim gives no support it has to be the conclusion?
So basically ONLY use the information given and don’t add your own truth to it
@SarahShaver something i read in the loophole that helped is that we should all assume the premises are true and not question them, only attack the relationship between them and the conclusion the stimulus makes
This argument is missing a premise that supports the conclusion. If there was a premise stating “tigers are mammals that have been kept as pets, but it’s ended in disaster every time because the tigers kept violently killing their owners” —> well then that does segue into a main point conclusion where we can see that tigers are aggressive and cause harm to people. Without that connecting premise though, the argument is flawed when presented in that direction.
Does that make sense to yall? It’s how I interpreted this example and hopefully it helped someone else
@monmon Thank you for this explanation. I got stumped on this one and had to re-read it multiple times.
@monmon I see what your saying but I think you can safely assume commonly accepted characteristics, e.g., tigers are powerful predators and not domesticated. Not every single detail will be provided on the test or in life/practice. But, from a strict formal logic stand point, you're not wrong. But that's why the LSAT is not 1:1 with formal logic.
A small clarification: defining support only as ‘increasing the likelihood’ doesn’t rule out simple probabilistic increases. Under that broad definition, the reverse order isn’t a perfect counterexample to "providing support" as defined as "increasing the liklihood of truth"), because it does increase the likelihood that tigers are dangerous.
So here: "Does that “premise” make it more likely that “tigers are very aggressive” or that “tigers can cause serious injury to people”? No, I don’t think so."
But doesn't it? In a world where all mammals are suitable pets, tigers being dangerous has zero probability; in a world where some mammals aren’t suitable pets, that probability is non-zero. So as stated, the definition of support doesn’t fully exclude this case since likelihood does increase in the reverse direction too.
Might be helpful to address this because I think the way i positioned it above would get you in to trouble on the LSAT and it's not unreasonable someone might wonder that, "hey isn't it more likely tigers are dangerous in a world that NOT all mammals are suitable pets than in a one where all mammals ARE suitable pets."
@JBOWLN Ok thank you. This is where my brain was getting confused. What about this- some, all, zero. Some means could include Tigers, except the premise details helps to include them in the conclusion. If it said, tigers are delightful and cuddly, it would make a little less sense because why would that not be a suitable characteristic to desire?
@JBOWLN do they test on the LSAT in such a way for non-zero or partial support? like I see what you're saying it didn't say tigers make great pets and then it's that they are dangerous, but even then maybe someone needs a dangerous pet... maybe it goes back to relationship in regards to relating and relativeness, what relates more/the most
@LiztheB no, I don't think the LSAT deals with simple probability-based relations unless the questions specifically sets it up as such and I think they will be explicit in that case (they will use the exact words, like icnrease probably, non-zero, etc.)
But realistically for most questions, I would call what the LSAT uses as "relevance based on the explicit content." In other words, my objection is correct in strict probability terms, where any statement that raises likelihood even slightly counts as support. But on the LSAT, support depends on the content of the premise providing a reason for that specific conclusion, not just logical compatibility. “Tigers are dangerous” contains content that directly explains why some mammals aren’t suitable pets, while “some mammals aren’t suitable pets” contains no content specifically pointing to tigers. So LSAT support requires content-based relevance, not merely a technical increase in probability.
statement = conclusion
support = premise
I like to think of support with the word "therefore"
Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people THEREFORE not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet
This trick doesn't work with every situation, but it can be helpful for starting off to recognize the patterns.
TO figure out whether there is support between a set of claims
Claim 1 Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
Claim 2 Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
In this case I feel claim one increases the likelihood of the truth of claim 2 more than the other way around because claim is true but could just be true in the sense of a a koala probably wouldn't be a suitable pet.
Whether a claim is supported is a different question from whether a claim is true.
Not sure if this will help people, but how I think of it is that one (the conclusion) is a statement, it's blunt and makes a clear point. the support (premise) is the evidence that supports it. In the Ex. about the tiger, the most blunt point is that some mammals aren't a good pet. The evidence to back this up (the knitty gritty) is like...well, look at a fricken tiger! They can't be a pet.
hope this is helpful to some extent.
there are also indicator words for conclusion + premise (use sparingly) but I assume we'll get to it
I see how a lot of people are confused with the issue that I also have, but reading the comments are somehow not hitting the spot for me.
My question (also) is, how do we tell the difference between a premise and a conclusion? How should I train myself to pick the right one?
I understand the idea that the claims must support one another to increase the likelihood of it being true, however, in the next lesson it states that order doesn't matter. I guess where I am confused is if order doesn't matter, then how do we determine that the conclusion + premise relationship is:
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. Premise: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
and not the other way around?
Am I thinking too deeply into this part and in the real test I should just assume what the conclusion is and what the premise is regardless of order?
@AprilSim I would love a more qualified person to correct me, but I have an idea as to what the answer may be.
Support = Increase likelihood of truth.
Premise: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
If the conclusion is supported (catcher) by the premise then the order is correct. If the conclusion is not supported by the premise then the order is incorrect. The premise in this order increases the likelihood of truth. Whereas the other order does not.
@AprilSim The best way I think about it — and the way I've been taught to tackle this — is to think about what point the author is trying to make (conclusion) and why (premise).
What is the point of this passage? Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet (conclusion)., why? Because tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people (premise)
Is this a good example, without defining "suitable pet"? No. Fish are pets, they are in a bowl, and we never touch them. If someone's perception of a pet is something you cage and look at - a Tiger is a suitable pet. Is this a possible inconsistency with test writers? The world imagined by test writers may themselves come with assumptions and in some cases lack of assumptions. On another question the word "suitable" may be interrogated instead of assumed. Interesting and annoying.
@SeanTucker I think that maybe they (hopefully) err on the side of caution and go with what a bear minimum (lol pun) would be- it is reasonable that someone who could seriously injure us through their aggression would not be an ideal being to take care for on na individual basis.
@SeanTucker this is why standardized tests are not universal to all, like lived experiences and "what is the truth", so in a way there is the lived experiences of the test writers that have to be taken into account and probably also why some questions are better than others...
So basically you have to ignore what you know about the world and take what the writers have said face value on the lsat?
@KhangaiChinzorig thats what I was thinking
@KhangaiChinzorig you must accept every premise as a fact. you can fight the hell out of the conclusion
@KhangaiChinzorig that's my main takeaway from this. Train your brain to take the writers argument at face value and not to fall into the traps of what we know from our knowledge of the world.
So that's what it feels like to have something click in your mind.
A trick I learned from an LSAT tutor is the "why, because" test. The why is the conclusion, the because is your premise. For example: "Blue and red make purple. Purple is on the spectrum of red and blue is used to deepen and shift red to a dark lilac hue." So, why do blue and red make purple? Because blue changes how red functions. While I am not an LSAT tutor, I do have a Discord study group if anyone would like to join (or to play MC lol): https://discord.gg/b8XaYkZHxk
@Naomiboyer04 Thank you for writing this! Very helpful actually.
@Naomiboyer04 This actually made it click for me, thanks!!
@Naomiboyer04 This was super helpful, thanks!
@Naomiboyer04 thank you soooooooooooo muchh
So, from what I gathered in this topic, we have to concentrate on the argument itself and to not think about the real reality, but rather to think about the concept of the argument itself reality.
congratulations you have just made two basic statements beyond comprehension
@RyanUribe 😭
@RyanUribe SCREAMING 🤣
@RyanUribe lmfaoooo this is hilarious
I'm confused about our application of the definition of "support".
We said A supports B iff A increases the likelihood of B. But in probability theory, this relation is always symmetric: if A supports B, then B supports A (by the same ratio, according to Bayes' theorem).
In the tiger example, the conclusion does actually support the premise: to see this, note that if all mammals were suitable pets, it would be pretty unlikely for tigers to be maiming humans.
So I'm wondering how to reconcile this with the directional arrows between premise and conclusion, the different words used, etc.