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Hi all. How do you work causal reasoning? I understand the flaws and whatnot for the most part (ommited options, such as no relationship, new factor, backwards casuation, etc). but for those good at it, what's your process like? how do you reconize a CR question and go from there? Thanks.
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Whenever a causal relationship is asserted (especially in a conclusion), I put my "jerk" hat on. Train yourself to be so skeptical of an asserted causal relationship that you will immediately start trying to poke holes in the relationship when you see one. Of course, valid causal relationships do appear on the LSAT, but they're in the small minority.
For example, "Rising water consumption is associated with more ER visits in town X. Therefore, greater water consumption in town X increases the likelihood that someone will go to the ER in town X." When I see this, my mind goes straight to trying to provide other possible causal relationships other than the one asserted (to show that the causal assertion is unjustified as is). For example, perhaps the water consumption rises because more visitors are coming to the town, which increases the net number of people in the area and therefore means more people are going to show up to the ER (an alternative explanation).
In short, I approach all "subjective" questions (i.e. ones where you are asked to critique the reasoning at play) by trying to point to flaws/assumptions in the argument. For causal reasoning, that often means thinking of alternative explanations that haven't been considered/ruled out.