Identifying Assumptions

mes08

Does anyone have any general advice for quickly and accurately identifying assumptions in arguments within the LR section? I feel like that's a weak spot for me so any advice on how to work on this would be immensely appreciated :}

kclubs323

One thing that I constantly do is ask myself "Why". For any assumption question there's always a premise and a conclusion. Based on the given premise and conclusion, I ask, why does that premise lead to that conclusion?

An example:

Premise: All Jedi are powerful.
Conclusion: Anakin is powerful.

But WHY is Anakin powerful? Based ONLY on the argument above, there's no reasonable way we can infer that Anakin is powerful. We know that Jedi are powerful and that Anakin is powerful, but why is Anakin powerful? Is Anakin a Jedi? Is Anakin a Sith? Is Anakin a descendant of some ancient being even more powerful than both the Sith and Jedi? Based on the argument above, we don't know, but as you ask questions like I did, those questions may actually be the assumption that the argument is making. In this case, the assumption is that Anakin is a Jedi.

So when you come across an argument, ask yourself why the conclusion follows from the given premise and as you work out the answer, then you may produce the correct answer. This has worked for me, but if someone else can offer a better method you should definitely try that as well.

Hope this helps!

lsatprep1994

This is great, thanks for the indepth reasoning. @kclubs323