Intermediate conclusions

BirdLaw818

I'm having trouble differentiating the IC from the premises and I don't like IC questions in general...if something leads to a conclusion then it makes sense that it's evidence/fact/premise. It's hard to understand what IC even does. It's like a conclusion that's not the overarching conclusion but it gives support to it.

If we have facts that are all linked to each other in a causal chain, let's say like 5 sentences/relations ,,, and these set of facts, going from one to the other, leads to an ultimate conclusion, where do we draw a line between this chain and say "okay, everything before this led up to this sentence, and this sentence directly supports the main conclusion, so this is the IC".

Is my definition or idea of it wrong? Is the IC, where it exists, a tangent conclusion or is it just the next broadest point in the argument? And I know the conclusion indicators and all but it's still tough. I feel like LSAC chooses to call some things a premise and some things an Intermediary Conclusion.

GrecoRoman

An intermediate conclusion acts as both a premise and a conclusion. It receives support from another premise and it acts a premise for the main conclusion. LSAT will call something a premise if it has no support itself and it supports an intermediate conclusion or the main conclusion. Do you have a particular question that confused you on?

BirdLaw818

Not particularly .

So you can't conclude a premise from another premise? Or if you do then it's considered an IC?

GrecoRoman

Ya that's basically right. A premise supporting another statement that is a premise for the main conclusion becomes an intermediate conclusion. An example is PT 30 S4 Q13. The subsidiary(intermediate) conclusion is "Probably this alleged theorem simply cannot be proved", which is supported by the premise "since no else has been able to prove it." The subsidiary conclusion then goes on to support the main conclusion "Therefore it is likely that Fermat was either lying or mistaken when he made his claim."

nessa.k13.0

@Kewlaidd said:
Not particularly .

So you can't conclude a premise from another premise? Or if you do then it's considered an IC?

You can conclude a premise from another premise in the sense that it is an intermediate conclusion and combined with the previous premise gives yield to the main conclusion. If in a stimulus you have a premise that you can't conclude from the one before it, then it's another premise.

goingfor99th

How I understand it: If a premise is supported by another premise, it must at least be an intermediate conclusion, if it is not the main conclusion.

I even put it in logical terms for you.

TheMikey

an IC is supported by at least 1 premise. but the IC is intermediate because it then supports the bigger picture of the the stimulus which is the main conclusion.