@EllieErnst Intermediate Conclusions/Subsidiary Conclusions exist. But they are partial conclusions that actually support another conclusion. Pretty rare though

Damn lawyers gotta be on point with everything they do, high stakes for sure.

@Daisy228 Nope, never challenge the truth of the premises, you can challenge the strength premises give to the conclusion, but if a premise says something is true it is not to be questioned.

The argument is using what we call conditional reasoning. A better way we can rephrase this would be to say: "If you have the pass, either you Prostrated yourself, or you gave adequate propitiations."

Then we would say, since Walt has the pass and did not prostrate himself, he must have given the propitiations.

@artimus13 I disagree, it needs to be stronger, like "No cat has ever eaten salmon, nor will any cat eat salmon." or something extreme like "If a cat eats salmon, they will die within 24 hours. Mr. Fat died within 24 hours of the incident, and there was nothing else that was in the trash bin, nor the rest of the accessible areas in the house that could have killed Mr. Fat Cat" That is a hilarious example, but you will get some insane premises in some stimuluses.

I was taught for Logical Reasoning, to treat all premises as true. This does not mean not to challenge the strength of the premises to the conclusion, but that they are to be true in the world of the stimulus.

@JRamirez The argument never says if the salmon is still there or not, so yea if the detective knew the same amount of salmon he threw away was still there, it would weaken the argument. Also you would want it to be stronger than "dislikes salmon" because many people eat things they dislike all the time. You would want it to say that Mr. Fat Cat has not and will not eat salmon.

@JayEgger I seen you comment and it very much helped me, because initially I actually disagreed with the first assumption you listed, I thought the overall conclusion the argument was making is that Mr. Fat Cat knocked over the trash bin, I did not think it was both that he knocked it over and that he wanted salmon. In my mind, I read the salmon part as more background information, rather than part of the conclusion.

Thanks.

@Daisy228 Yes, this is the case, MOST of the time. Because, even if there is only one assumption in an argument, where that assumption lies on the reasonableness spectrum determines the strength of a statement/argument. If the one and only assumption makes you take a huge leap to assume its true(unreasonable), then it makes the argument weaker.

I will say that we as test takers want statements that have relatively fewer assumptions, this is because if we know there is only one assumption, then we can really narrow down our anticipation of the correct answer. If there are 10 assumptions in a single argument, then our job gets a little bit harder.

@Derekt19 It is not that the assumptions themselves are more vulnerable to criticisms, it is that the argument is more vulnerable to criticism due to the assumptions it makes. We typically do not call assumptions vulnerable, we say they make the argument vulnerable

In this case, the assumption that tigers are mammals is a highly reasonable assumption because there is no debate, it is scientifically proven that tigers are mammals. This assumption does not really have too much of an effect on the argument

But, there is debate on whether aggressiveness and potential to cause harm is an unsuitable characteristic for a pet. This assumption can make the argument highly vulnerable.

@KayleeMurray Assumptions are never written in the Stimulus, they are always unstated, it is our job to find which assumptions are being made and then we must evaluate how important the assumptions are to the strength of support in the argument. Keep your questions in mind as you continue through the core curriculum because J.Y. made this chronologically so that the questions you get from one module will be answered in the next.

@Jaximous3 Yes, there are certainly a few questions that actually require you to know some basic understandings of the world or semi-advanced vocabulary understandings. But, in 99 percent of cases, just rely on the premises and the strength of their support to the conclusion.

The LSAT writers know the tests like the back of their hand, EVERY single word that is in an LSAT question, whether its the stimulus or answer choice is critically analyzed by the writers before it is made into a real question. They know we are going to be torn with our real world knowledge compared to what is in the premises, it is all intentional to see how well we can discern premises, not our real world knowledge of the world.

Love IT

I absolutely love the Cookie Cutter analogy, that lays out a great first idea of what we go up against, My other LSAT Study Courses did not lay that out as well as 7Sage.

Darn it, I only have one attempt left on the LSAT before I have to wait like 4 years. I am not making much progress, back to the drawing board starting with core curriculum. Good luck everyone!