@Jojivlogs I agree with you. We are using our "worldly knowledge" to assume that tigers are mammals and being aggressive/causing serious injuries = not suitable to keep as pets.
I really wish someone with better public speaking skills was doing these videos. His pacing is inconsistent and he doesn't sound comfortable giving the material.
P supports C, and it makes sense. P being true strengthens trust that C could be more.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're confused about why "Not every mammal is suitable..." statement can't be the premise, the statement does not confirm that all mammals are not suitable to keep as a pet.
For example:
Premise : Not every mammal is suitable...
Conclusion: Tigers are very agressive...
We simply don't know if Tiger is one of the mammals P claims to be not suitable to keep as a pet. Therefore, it does not support the conclusion.
Please enlighten me with the wrath of your knowledge if I'm wrong.
To help anyone's confusion, this passage is just explaining how to identify a premise and conclusion. And the way to figure this out is to ask yourself "If claim A were true, would it make claim B more likely to be true?" If the answer is yes, then A is supporting B. A= Premise, B= Conclusion
What I am trying to understand is, how would we know what is the conclusion and what is the premise in the question? Do we assume that the conclusion in the passage is always the sentence without evidence or support, and the one that reads more like an example backing up the argument will always be the premise? The tiger sentence is more specific in detail, so does that automatically make it evidence-based to support a more generic statement like "not all mammals are suitable pets"?
@themoodyactivist I think in this stimulus, “after all” is the key clue because it introduces the evidence. The author’s main point is that not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. The tiger sentence is the support because it gives the reason why: tigers are aggressive and can seriously injure people.
We can also use the therefore test:
“Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people. Therefore, not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.”
That makes sense.
But the reverse does not work as well:
“Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. Therefore, tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.”
That does not really follow, because the broad claim does not prove that specific fact about tigers. So the tiger sentence is the premise, and the broader claim about mammals is the conclusion.
@themoodyactivist Here is another example to think about: Maria probably studied hard for the exam, since she got the highest score in the class. Test the first direction.... In a world where Maria got the highest score on the exam. Does it make it more likely that Maria studied hard for the exam? Yes. Getting the highest score is evidence that she likely studied hard. But then try reversing it in the other direction. In a world where Maria studied hard for the exam, does it make it more likely that she got the highest score on the exam? No. She could have studied hard but still did poorly or not as good as someone else. Therefore, the premise is: Maria got the highest score in the class and the conclusion is: Maria probably studied hard. The fact Maria got the highest score in the class is evidence (support) that she studied hard.
Is it assumed that every argument is in "Conclusion" and then "Premise" format? Because you said in your second example, the premise does not support the conclusion, but if the premises and the conclusion were not labeled, can't we assume it was actually the same as the first example?
@caseysweeney Hey Casey, not every argument is in conclusion to premise format. Something that would help is to learn conclusion and premise indications. Terms like "hence, therefore, so, thus, as a result" are conclusion indicators. Terms like "because, after all, as, for, since" are premise indicators. These are super helpful because they can help you identify premises and conclusions super quickly when reading an argument.
For something to be an argument it has to have a premise that supports a conclusion.
In the example he gave, we were identifying if it was an argument and if so, what was the premise and conclusion.
For example:
"Premise: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
Conclusion: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people."
In this example the Premise DOES NOT support the conclusion. BUT we can still look at the statements in the reverse order:
For example:
"Premise: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet."
In this example the Premise DOES support the conclusion. THEREFORE THIS IS AN ARGUMENT.
This also means that the way we have labeled each claim in this second example is correct. Tigers being aggressive is the premise and not all mammals being suitable pets is the conclusion. "If it's true that tigers are aggressive and can hurt people, then it is more likely true that not all mammals make good pets."
Ok, I watched the video, and my initial assumption was that this was not an argument. The reason is that I structured it in my head as: “if” + premise (an assumed claim) + “therefore” + conclusion (my final judgment). My thinking was that if I can identify plausible exceptions to the conclusion, then it is not really functioning as a conclusion.
Since I could think of exceptions to the statement “after all, ... to people,” I assumed the sentence was not actually presenting an argument. However, I am a bit confused now. About halfway through the video, it seems to classify it as an argument, but then later it appears to reverse course and say that it is not. Am I missing something ?
@AmirAlavi No, he's saying that the original statement is an argument but if you flip the premise and the conclusion, it's no longer an argument. I think he was just showing that they're not necessarily interchangeable.
@carsonjb the claim shouldn’t just be true it should also offer support. Some mammals are unsuitable pets has nothing to do with tigers being aggressive. Many people keep dogs that are aggressive as pets due to aggression. Just because the tiger is aggressive it does not support the conclusion that some mammals are unsuitable pets directly despite being correct.
@carsonjb Yep! The takeaway is "If claim A is true, then it will increase the LIKELIHOOD that claim B is true as well". That's the concept of Support.
This just means the goal is to find which claim is "Premise" and which is "Conclusion". Conclusion is the claim SUPPORTED by Premise. Premise is the claim SUPPORTING the Conclusion.
[Reason sentence 1 isn't the premise]
You don't get much from it info wise.
Thinking like "Not every mammal is suitable as a pet, Therefore, Tigers are very aggressive." Shows us the first sentence makes NO sense as the Premise (The Supporter) because the first sentence is a STATEMENT. a statement is almost like a comment. The Premise is like the "Evidence" to the comment.
"Not every mammal is suitable as a pet. Afterall, Tigers are very aggressive and can seriously hurt people".
"After all" is a Premise word hint, so anytime you see that its Premise!
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.
@JBOWLN Yes but they're saying to remove all safe assumptions because that's the knowledge you've gathered through/from life. Take what you see written for face value. Don't add or subtract based off of what you know beyond what's on the paper.
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
167 comments
what type of question is this? or is it just the most basic level of argument?
“Conclusion”: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
(Why?)
Because...
“Premise”: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
What does that have to do with tigers being aggressive and causing serious injuries to people? This "premise" does not support this "conclusion".
@Jojivlogs I agree with you. We are using our "worldly knowledge" to assume that tigers are mammals and being aggressive/causing serious injuries = not suitable to keep as pets.
I really wish someone with better public speaking skills was doing these videos. His pacing is inconsistent and he doesn't sound comfortable giving the material.
Premise : Tigers are very agressive...
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable...
P supports C, and it makes sense. P being true strengthens trust that C could be more.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're confused about why "Not every mammal is suitable..." statement can't be the premise, the statement does not confirm that all mammals are not suitable to keep as a pet.
For example:
Premise : Not every mammal is suitable...
Conclusion: Tigers are very agressive...
We simply don't know if Tiger is one of the mammals P claims to be not suitable to keep as a pet. Therefore, it does not support the conclusion.
Please enlighten me with the wrath of your knowledge if I'm wrong.
To help anyone's confusion, this passage is just explaining how to identify a premise and conclusion. And the way to figure this out is to ask yourself "If claim A were true, would it make claim B more likely to be true?" If the answer is yes, then A is supporting B. A= Premise, B= Conclusion
What I am trying to understand is, how would we know what is the conclusion and what is the premise in the question? Do we assume that the conclusion in the passage is always the sentence without evidence or support, and the one that reads more like an example backing up the argument will always be the premise? The tiger sentence is more specific in detail, so does that automatically make it evidence-based to support a more generic statement like "not all mammals are suitable pets"?
@themoodyactivist I think in this stimulus, “after all” is the key clue because it introduces the evidence. The author’s main point is that not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. The tiger sentence is the support because it gives the reason why: tigers are aggressive and can seriously injure people.
We can also use the therefore test:
“Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people. Therefore, not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.”
That makes sense.
But the reverse does not work as well:
“Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet. Therefore, tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.”
That does not really follow, because the broad claim does not prove that specific fact about tigers. So the tiger sentence is the premise, and the broader claim about mammals is the conclusion.
@gabee Thanks for this Gabriel :) As I continued studying, it made more sense to me! But you are absolutely right.
@themoodyactivist Here is another example to think about: Maria probably studied hard for the exam, since she got the highest score in the class. Test the first direction.... In a world where Maria got the highest score on the exam. Does it make it more likely that Maria studied hard for the exam? Yes. Getting the highest score is evidence that she likely studied hard. But then try reversing it in the other direction. In a world where Maria studied hard for the exam, does it make it more likely that she got the highest score on the exam? No. She could have studied hard but still did poorly or not as good as someone else. Therefore, the premise is: Maria got the highest score in the class and the conclusion is: Maria probably studied hard. The fact Maria got the highest score in the class is evidence (support) that she studied hard.
@JessicaHaley TYSM! <3
@JessicaHaley thank you for this example! It helped to clarify a more
Is it assumed that every argument is in "Conclusion" and then "Premise" format? Because you said in your second example, the premise does not support the conclusion, but if the premises and the conclusion were not labeled, can't we assume it was actually the same as the first example?
@caseysweeney Hey Casey, not every argument is in conclusion to premise format. Something that would help is to learn conclusion and premise indications. Terms like "hence, therefore, so, thus, as a result" are conclusion indicators. Terms like "because, after all, as, for, since" are premise indicators. These are super helpful because they can help you identify premises and conclusions super quickly when reading an argument.
For something to be an argument it has to have a premise that supports a conclusion.
In the example he gave, we were identifying if it was an argument and if so, what was the premise and conclusion.
For example:
"Premise: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet.
Conclusion: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people."
In this example the Premise DOES NOT support the conclusion. BUT we can still look at the statements in the reverse order:
For example:
"Premise: Tigers are very aggressive and can cause serious injuries to people.
Conclusion: Not every mammal is suitable to keep as a pet."
In this example the Premise DOES support the conclusion. THEREFORE THIS IS AN ARGUMENT.
This also means that the way we have labeled each claim in this second example is correct. Tigers being aggressive is the premise and not all mammals being suitable pets is the conclusion. "If it's true that tigers are aggressive and can hurt people, then it is more likely true that not all mammals make good pets."
Hope this helps!! 💕💕
Ok, I watched the video, and my initial assumption was that this was not an argument. The reason is that I structured it in my head as: “if” + premise (an assumed claim) + “therefore” + conclusion (my final judgment). My thinking was that if I can identify plausible exceptions to the conclusion, then it is not really functioning as a conclusion.
Since I could think of exceptions to the statement “after all, ... to people,” I assumed the sentence was not actually presenting an argument. However, I am a bit confused now. About halfway through the video, it seems to classify it as an argument, but then later it appears to reverse course and say that it is not. Am I missing something ?
@AmirAlavi No, he's saying that the original statement is an argument but if you flip the premise and the conclusion, it's no longer an argument. I think he was just showing that they're not necessarily interchangeable.
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.
@carsonjb the claim shouldn’t just be true it should also offer support. Some mammals are unsuitable pets has nothing to do with tigers being aggressive. Many people keep dogs that are aggressive as pets due to aggression. Just because the tiger is aggressive it does not support the conclusion that some mammals are unsuitable pets directly despite being correct.
@carsonjb Yep! The takeaway is "If claim A is true, then it will increase the LIKELIHOOD that claim B is true as well". That's the concept of Support.
This just means the goal is to find which claim is "Premise" and which is "Conclusion". Conclusion is the claim SUPPORTED by Premise. Premise is the claim SUPPORTING the Conclusion.
[Reason sentence 1 isn't the premise]
You don't get much from it info wise.
Thinking like "Not every mammal is suitable as a pet, Therefore, Tigers are very aggressive." Shows us the first sentence makes NO sense as the Premise (The Supporter) because the first sentence is a STATEMENT. a statement is almost like a comment. The Premise is like the "Evidence" to the comment.
"Not every mammal is suitable as a pet. Afterall, Tigers are very aggressive and can seriously hurt people".
"After all" is a Premise word hint, so anytime you see that its Premise!
So the Conclusion is the first sentence.
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.
@JBOWLN Yes but they're saying to remove all safe assumptions because that's the knowledge you've gathered through/from life. Take what you see written for face value. Don't add or subtract based off of what you know beyond what's on the paper.
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