I got this right but I was confused about C because doesn't it provide an alternate explanation and weaken the argument? Like it is the less visits to the feeder that increased population NOT the mild winter?
I don't think (C) gives an alternative explanation. The author's explanation is that the mild winter caused the larger bird population. The problem is that the first causal chain stops too early. It says Mild winter → More natural foraging → Fewer feeder visits. It doesn't explain how fewer feeder visits lead to larger bird population. (C) fills that gap by adding the missing link:
Fewer feeder visits → Fewer birds eaten by predators → More birds survive → Larger Bird Population. So it completes the missing link in causal chain. It doesn't provide an alternative explanation.
I don't know if anyone else saw it this way, but for me, E fit into the mold of a common wrong answer choice in WSE questions (and RRE).
It pretends to contradict a part of the argument (in this case, the claim about mild winters and less frequent bird feeding). But it fails. It tells us that feeders and naturally foraging are not mutually exclusive, but the stim never makes that claim. Therefore, it is merely consistent with the argument.
@IsabelSafar It's dumb but I've used this strategy for every test I've ever taken. Substitute the unknown word with a nonsense word, and you can get a good idea of how the word is being used, if not it's definition.
For example, I might reread the stimulus as:
"The mild winter also allowed many species to stay in their summer range all winter without migrating south, thereby limiting the usual waffles accompanying migration. Hence, last year's mild winter is responsible for this year's larger-than-usual bird population."
Waffles must be bad. Its implied that if there are waffles accompanying migration, there's less birds at the end of the migration.
Ugh I'm soo confused, could someone please explain to me what our objective is when dealing with Causal Mechanism and Causal Chains for both Strengthen and Weaken questions?
Up until now I have understood the Phenomenon hypothesis and the Ideal experiment framework, but I feel that this section does a poor job of effectively explaining what our objectives should be for Causal Mechanisms and Causal Chains; I seriously do not even understand how we are supposed to approach these. The "You Try's" for the Causal Mechanism's(AKA lesson 5) don't seem consistent enough for me to least at least derive a central theme, and then we have this???
@Mari_on_nette So, I got it wrong but after studying it here is what I unbderstood: In the stimulus they mentioned two things mild winter caused
Birds don't go to feeders
Birds didn't migrate
The text also explains how birds not migrating affected the population of birds but it never explained how the feeders affected the population so whenever you see that they're giving you two observations to reach a conclusion, the answer is usually how one of them contributed to the result.
So, for this type of question, when the question stem says "strengthen the reasoning of the argument," we are looking for the answer that strengthens the premise??
So for questions like this, are we looking at both premises, seeing which premise out of all has no causal mechanism, and finding a strengthening reasoning for that specific premise?
Dude, this made no sense. C litterally sounds just like an alternative hypothesis and disproves the first premise.
If the 1st premise is saying "mild winters increased forage, which decreased vistis to the feeders" then C claims that "no, the reason they don't come to feeders is becasue of predetors".
Qeustion at hand: How do you strengthen a causal argument that contains multiple causal premises but only one clearly supports the conclusion?
Explanation: Identify a causal premise that is currently irrelevant, then add a link that connects it to the conclusion. A Strengthen answer can work by completing a causal chain:
If A → B is given, and the conclusion depends on C, strengthen by showing B → C.
🧠 Core LSAT Rule (memorize this)
If a premise doesn’t yet affect the conclusion, strengthen by giving it causal relevance.
Answer C provides a link that makes the first premise of the argument relevant to the conclusion: The Mild winter let birds forage in the forest instead of at the bird feeders where they are suseptible to pray and could be killed by predators, so since they are not exposed to predators and are foraging in the forest where they are less likely to do due to the mild winter, the argument is strengthened that the mild winter is responsible for this year's larger-than-usual bird population.
@SMRegalado Reasonable assumptions that don't contradict the "truth" of the answer choice. If the prompt says "if true" then it doesn't matter if the choice says "Mars is made up of moonbeams," we can't assume that it is incorrect just because in the real world it IS incorrect.
Conclusion: Last year’s mild winter reason for larger bird population.
Why: it was mild for bird to forage naturally and not visit feeders; they stayed home in summer range without migrating south.
Assumption: it's a strengthening question - we know that mild winter made it easier for birds to forage naturally... but what makes it so that foraging naturally (versus eating at feeders) is ALSO/ADDITIONALLY beneficial (other than the fact that the winter was mild)?
---> Answer choice C: eating at feeders = more dangerous because of predators; foraging naturally = easier because of the winter (milder makes it easier), but ALSO because it's safer (less vulnerable to predators).
Took me a while to figure out that I'm looking for a misssing premise rather than affriming the conclusion. atleast that what makes the mose sense to me in this case.
Not that i am not gaining a ton out of these classes - but does anyone else sometimes skip or pause the videos early if you find the explanation is over explaning or like causing you to overthink the solution?
Causal relationship questions require more work for me than all others. I hate them. Other types, I can read it, and work it all out in my head. Anyone feel the same way?
the questions we've been examining in this section were more directed towards finding an alternative hypothesis by strengthening/weakening the connection between the phenomenon and the conclusion. This question to me was distinctly different because it directly strengthened a weak phenomena that seemed non-essential, which strengthened the entire argument.
A critique about the explanations is its very obvious they know the answer and why its wrong, so the explanation just feels like 'think this way' rather than actually TEACHING. Its getting annoying lol
I wasn't understanding how C could be correct and then I reread the prompt, "Birds eating..." I had been reading the prompt as "Birds who eat at feeders..." and was like how does this apply to anything we are talking about birds at large not just feeder eating birds.
you could play with it and make up your own answer choice to weaken it by attacking the support. i think D would be the closest thing to weakening it that the answer choice gives.
I understand how this can be seen as strengthening the reasoning, but wouldn't this also be adding an alternative hypothesis instead of enforcing the original conclusion.
@maxiheinz2003405 No, because it's not an alternative hypothesis, it's a secondary causal mechanism pointing to the same conclusion/hypothesis. The conclusion of the stimmy states that the mild winter caused the larger-than-usual bird population this year. One reason that the conclusion is likely to be true is that the birds didn't need to migrate, which has some level of attrition associated with it. Another supporting factor is that the birds could forage naturally and didn't need to risk eating at bird feeders, which is more dangerous according to answer choice C. Both of these support the primary conclusion of the stimmy, which is the mild winter led to conditions that caused the bird population to grow. Giving a second reason for why the conclusion is true is a great way to support it.
To weaken the argument, an alternative hypothesis gives an alternate explanation that points away from the conclusion in the stimmy. For example, an alternative hypothesis that would weaken this argument would be something like:
Due to increased funding for animal control in the area, populations of feral house cats, one of the primary threats to local bird populations, have been severely reduced this year.
This would offer an alternative hypothesis for why the bird population has grown this year unrelated to the mild winter, thus weakening the argument in the stimmy.
In Answer choice - C why are we considering that predators could affect the feeders. The stimulus doesnt even mention any predators. Please help me out.
Answer choice C says that birds eating at feeders are more vulnerable to predators THAN are birds foraging naturally.
IF--as the stimulus suggests--the mild winter led more birds to forage naturally instead of relying on feeders, THEN fewer birds were exposed to the higher risk of predation associated with feeders. That means fewer birds would have been killed by predators this year compared to a typical winter (AKA, there is a larger-than-usual bird population this year).
I like to use hypothetical numbers sometimes to help me understand things more clearly. So, imagine that in a normal year, 1,000 birds feed at feeders, and 50% fall prey to predators—so 500 die. But this year, with the mild winter, maybe only 100 birds use feeders, resulting in just 50 deaths. That’s 450 fewer deaths due to predation, which naturally leads to a higher surviving bird population.
So, the mild winter indirectly caused a larger-than-usual bird population by reducing predation through decreased feeder usage.
Hope that helps clarify things—this one’s a bit tricky!
May be a little late but the predators coming into this answer choice is what reinforces this as the right answer. We are told in the stimulus that mild winters allow bird species to forage naturally, which is why the proportion of birds visiting feeders has decreased.
We are then told in this answer choice that birds that attend feeders are more vulnerable to predators than when they forage naturally. Well... If less birds are visiting feeders, wouldn't that mean less are vulnerable to predators. Here I made an assumption that because they are now foraging naturally, their population will either remain the same, or increase, given that birds will mate, but there will be less of a negative impact on their population.
For that reason, we can determine that C is strengthening our explanation, simply because the mild weather is leading to less feeder visits from birds, reducing vulnerability of being eaten.
87 comments
I got this right but I was confused about C because doesn't it provide an alternate explanation and weaken the argument? Like it is the less visits to the feeder that increased population NOT the mild winter?
@AreeshaSaif
I don't think (C) gives an alternative explanation. The author's explanation is that the mild winter caused the larger bird population. The problem is that the first causal chain stops too early. It says Mild winter → More natural foraging → Fewer feeder visits. It doesn't explain how fewer feeder visits lead to larger bird population. (C) fills that gap by adding the missing link:
Fewer feeder visits → Fewer birds eaten by predators → More birds survive → Larger Bird Population. So it completes the missing link in causal chain. It doesn't provide an alternative explanation.
just fell into the trap.
keyword here was argument, not conclusion. conclusion was that birds were able to forage naturally. argument was around the feeder visitation rates
I don't know if anyone else saw it this way, but for me, E fit into the mold of a common wrong answer choice in WSE questions (and RRE).
It pretends to contradict a part of the argument (in this case, the claim about mild winters and less frequent bird feeding). But it fails. It tells us that feeders and naturally foraging are not mutually exclusive, but the stim never makes that claim. Therefore, it is merely consistent with the argument.
how would you do this question if you do not know what "attrition" means?
I feel that I run into issues with not knowing the meaning of a word and then it impacts my ability to solve the question accurately.
@IsabelSafar It's dumb but I've used this strategy for every test I've ever taken. Substitute the unknown word with a nonsense word, and you can get a good idea of how the word is being used, if not it's definition.
For example, I might reread the stimulus as:
"The mild winter also allowed many species to stay in their summer range all winter without migrating south, thereby limiting the usual waffles accompanying migration. Hence, last year's mild winter is responsible for this year's larger-than-usual bird population."
Waffles must be bad. Its implied that if there are waffles accompanying migration, there's less birds at the end of the migration.
#Help
Ugh I'm soo confused, could someone please explain to me what our objective is when dealing with Causal Mechanism and Causal Chains for both Strengthen and Weaken questions?
Up until now I have understood the Phenomenon hypothesis and the Ideal experiment framework, but I feel that this section does a poor job of effectively explaining what our objectives should be for Causal Mechanisms and Causal Chains; I seriously do not even understand how we are supposed to approach these. The "You Try's" for the Causal Mechanism's(AKA lesson 5) don't seem consistent enough for me to least at least derive a central theme, and then we have this???
@Mari_on_nette So, I got it wrong but after studying it here is what I unbderstood: In the stimulus they mentioned two things mild winter caused
Birds don't go to feeders
Birds didn't migrate
The text also explains how birds not migrating affected the population of birds but it never explained how the feeders affected the population so whenever you see that they're giving you two observations to reach a conclusion, the answer is usually how one of them contributed to the result.
So, for this type of question, when the question stem says "strengthen the reasoning of the argument," we are looking for the answer that strengthens the premise??
im having a hard time trying to figure out when it would be appropriate/good use of time to do a chain
I wonder if I would've gotten this right if I knew what attrition meant lol
@rjon27 yo that word messed me up
So for questions like this, are we looking at both premises, seeing which premise out of all has no causal mechanism, and finding a strengthening reasoning for that specific premise?
Dude, this made no sense. C litterally sounds just like an alternative hypothesis and disproves the first premise.
If the 1st premise is saying "mild winters increased forage, which decreased vistis to the feeders" then C claims that "no, the reason they don't come to feeders is becasue of predetors".
@CMas Hi Friend! Hope this helps:
Qeustion at hand: How do you strengthen a causal argument that contains multiple causal premises but only one clearly supports the conclusion?
Explanation: Identify a causal premise that is currently irrelevant, then add a link that connects it to the conclusion. A Strengthen answer can work by completing a causal chain:
If A → B is given, and the conclusion depends on C, strengthen by showing B → C.
🧠 Core LSAT Rule (memorize this)
If a premise doesn’t yet affect the conclusion, strengthen by giving it causal relevance.
Answer C provides a link that makes the first premise of the argument relevant to the conclusion: The Mild winter let birds forage in the forest instead of at the bird feeders where they are suseptible to pray and could be killed by predators, so since they are not exposed to predators and are foraging in the forest where they are less likely to do due to the mild winter, the argument is strengthened that the mild winter is responsible for this year's larger-than-usual bird population.
@DanielleMeuret Thank you. This tells me that you really have to pay attention to the structure of the logic and conclusion in the stimulus.
how is a bird feeder more dangerous than in the wild??
@SMRegalado valid thought, however we have to put our inherent knowledge of things aside when the question stem says “if true”
@destinyMejia Except when we the answers require us to make reasonable assumptions?
@SMRegalado Reasonable assumptions that don't contradict the "truth" of the answer choice. If the prompt says "if true" then it doesn't matter if the choice says "Mars is made up of moonbeams," we can't assume that it is incorrect just because in the real world it IS incorrect.
Conclusion: Last year’s mild winter reason for larger bird population.
Why: it was mild for bird to forage naturally and not visit feeders; they stayed home in summer range without migrating south.
Assumption: it's a strengthening question - we know that mild winter made it easier for birds to forage naturally... but what makes it so that foraging naturally (versus eating at feeders) is ALSO/ADDITIONALLY beneficial (other than the fact that the winter was mild)?
---> Answer choice C: eating at feeders = more dangerous because of predators; foraging naturally = easier because of the winter (milder makes it easier), but ALSO because it's safer (less vulnerable to predators).
Took me a while to figure out that I'm looking for a misssing premise rather than affriming the conclusion. atleast that what makes the mose sense to me in this case.
My biggest opp is me....I didn't realize this was a strengthening question and nearly blew my brains out trying to figure out the answer....
Not that i am not gaining a ton out of these classes - but does anyone else sometimes skip or pause the videos early if you find the explanation is over explaning or like causing you to overthink the solution?
@Sunday_Blues13 yep, I feel like this section of classes isn't as strong as previous ones.
@Sunday_Blues13 For me--reading the lessons helps me better comprehend than watching the video
Causal relationship questions require more work for me than all others. I hate them. Other types, I can read it, and work it all out in my head. Anyone feel the same way?
@JRamirez yeah :(
the questions we've been examining in this section were more directed towards finding an alternative hypothesis by strengthening/weakening the connection between the phenomenon and the conclusion. This question to me was distinctly different because it directly strengthened a weak phenomena that seemed non-essential, which strengthened the entire argument.
A critique about the explanations is its very obvious they know the answer and why its wrong, so the explanation just feels like 'think this way' rather than actually TEACHING. Its getting annoying lol
@QarimatOgunneye Reading the transcripts helps me more than watching the video
@bcn Agree with this! I stopped watching the videos and started reading instead. It has been helpful to do it this way.
also keep in mind it says the REASONING not the conclusion! that's why I looked at A to be a delicious answer !!
We have 10 minutes for a question like this right... right?
I wasn't understanding how C could be correct and then I reread the prompt, "Birds eating..." I had been reading the prompt as "Birds who eat at feeders..." and was like how does this apply to anything we are talking about birds at large not just feeder eating birds.
I just need to read the prompts more carefully.
How would you handle a casual chain in a premise in a prompt if it was a weaken question?
you could play with it and make up your own answer choice to weaken it by attacking the support. i think D would be the closest thing to weakening it that the answer choice gives.
I understand how this can be seen as strengthening the reasoning, but wouldn't this also be adding an alternative hypothesis instead of enforcing the original conclusion.
@maxiheinz2003405 No, because it's not an alternative hypothesis, it's a secondary causal mechanism pointing to the same conclusion/hypothesis. The conclusion of the stimmy states that the mild winter caused the larger-than-usual bird population this year. One reason that the conclusion is likely to be true is that the birds didn't need to migrate, which has some level of attrition associated with it. Another supporting factor is that the birds could forage naturally and didn't need to risk eating at bird feeders, which is more dangerous according to answer choice C. Both of these support the primary conclusion of the stimmy, which is the mild winter led to conditions that caused the bird population to grow. Giving a second reason for why the conclusion is true is a great way to support it.
To weaken the argument, an alternative hypothesis gives an alternate explanation that points away from the conclusion in the stimmy. For example, an alternative hypothesis that would weaken this argument would be something like:
Due to increased funding for animal control in the area, populations of feral house cats, one of the primary threats to local bird populations, have been severely reduced this year.
This would offer an alternative hypothesis for why the bird population has grown this year unrelated to the mild winter, thus weakening the argument in the stimmy.
In Answer choice - C why are we considering that predators could affect the feeders. The stimulus doesnt even mention any predators. Please help me out.
Answer choice C says that birds eating at feeders are more vulnerable to predators THAN are birds foraging naturally.
IF--as the stimulus suggests--the mild winter led more birds to forage naturally instead of relying on feeders, THEN fewer birds were exposed to the higher risk of predation associated with feeders. That means fewer birds would have been killed by predators this year compared to a typical winter (AKA, there is a larger-than-usual bird population this year).
I like to use hypothetical numbers sometimes to help me understand things more clearly. So, imagine that in a normal year, 1,000 birds feed at feeders, and 50% fall prey to predators—so 500 die. But this year, with the mild winter, maybe only 100 birds use feeders, resulting in just 50 deaths. That’s 450 fewer deaths due to predation, which naturally leads to a higher surviving bird population.
So, the mild winter indirectly caused a larger-than-usual bird population by reducing predation through decreased feeder usage.
Hope that helps clarify things—this one’s a bit tricky!
May be a little late but the predators coming into this answer choice is what reinforces this as the right answer. We are told in the stimulus that mild winters allow bird species to forage naturally, which is why the proportion of birds visiting feeders has decreased.
We are then told in this answer choice that birds that attend feeders are more vulnerable to predators than when they forage naturally. Well... If less birds are visiting feeders, wouldn't that mean less are vulnerable to predators. Here I made an assumption that because they are now foraging naturally, their population will either remain the same, or increase, given that birds will mate, but there will be less of a negative impact on their population.
For that reason, we can determine that C is strengthening our explanation, simply because the mild weather is leading to less feeder visits from birds, reducing vulnerability of being eaten.
This was a really good explanation!