LR Conclusion Question.

foxtrot96

For Lr Questions such as this in which the conclusion has a conditional statement.

Admin edit: do not post the actual LSAT question here.
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-23-section-3-question-09/

I invariably get them right but its because of my intuition and not because of how i know how to solve them. Can someone tell me How do you approach this?

akistotle

Hi @foxtrot96,

You can't post an actual LSAT question here. The question you posted is PT23.S3.Q10. (Strengthening):
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-23-section-3-question-10/

This isn't a Main Conclusion question. Were you referring to PT23.S3.Q10? Would you like to ask how to solve this particular question (if so, I'll edit the title of this post) or do you have some general questions regarding LR stimuli with conclusions containing conditionals?

@foxtrot96 said:
For Lr Questions such as this in which the conclusion has a conditional statement.

Yes, the conclusion has a conditional statement.

I invariably get them right but its because of my intuition and not because of how i know how to solve them. Can someone tell me How do you approach this?

Here is a lesson on Strengthen question: https://7sage.com/lesson/how-to-strengthen-arguments/

Could you elaborate on what you are asking?

foxtrot96

i'm sorry about that. i'll keep that in mind next time onwards.

As for the question its actually this one: https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-23-section-3-question-09/

Now what i was asking is that for a question like this which has a conditional conclusion, i dont really understand if i am supposed to draw it out or how to go about it.

This being an easier question i could spot the new word "feasible" in the conclusion and really work my way to the correct answer but i really struggle when such conditional conclusions come in more difficult LR questions. i dont really understand how to make sense of that conclusion or how to evaluate the argument because the conclusion is conditional. so just wanted to someone's opinion as to how to tackle such conclusions.

Sami

@foxtrot96 said:
i'm sorry about that. i'll keep that in mind next time onwards.

As for the question its actually this one: https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-23-section-3-question-09/

Now what i was asking is that for a question like this which has a conditional conclusion, i dont really understand if i am supposed to draw it out or how to go about it.

Definitely do not draw. Just try to understand.

On the real LSAT we have a time constraint. Drawing it out means you are about take time and drawing itself can lead to mistakes and missing out on the complexity of what the answer choice is saying. I actually believe unless the stimulus is conditional heavy, 3-4 conditional chains that you just cannot see how they link up, you should never draw. If you find yourself leaning towards drawing a lot, try doing the fundamental drills in core-curriculum about conditional logic to get faster at doing the simple ones in your head.

I think an easier way to understand is just to see if there is enough support for the conclusion from the premise and because this is LSAT, its not going to be enough.

The premise is saying that if a person choses to walk rather than drive then there would be less pollution emitted than otherwise would have if they had driven. We don't know how much less pollution there would be if they walked instead, just less. So if right now people emit 100 pollution then maybe this person would help reduce it to 99 or a bit lower. We just don't know how much.

Then the argument goes on to conclude that if people would walk whenever feasible pollution would be greatly reduced.

My immediate question after reading this was that I know if people walked instead of driving we would pollute less but what do we know about how feasible it is to walk rather than drive from the premises? What if everyone is driving from suburbs to the cities and its just not feasible to walk? So I have something in my conclusion that my premises just do not give me enough support to conclude anything about.

This is what answer choice E addresses. Since this is an NA stimulus it a very weak way of saying that some people are driving when it is feasible for them to walk. Because if they are not, we are in a situation where everyone is already walking whenever feasible and if no one walks less we would produce the same amount of pollution.

This being an easier question i could spot the new word "feasible" in the conclusion and really work my way to the correct answer but i really struggle when such conditional conclusions come in more difficult LR questions. i dont really understand how to make sense of that conclusion or how to evaluate the argument because the conclusion is conditional. so just wanted to someone's opinion as to how to tackle such conclusions.

I think a way to think about this if you are really struggling is to see the conditional chain in the conclusion and asking yourself, based on the premises if the sufficient was to trigger what could I conclude?

So based on my premises what can I conclude about if people would walk whenever it is feasible for them to do so?
The answer would be, I have no information about how feasible it is for people to walk instead of driving from the premises, so I cannot conclude anything.
But the author concludes that the pollution would be greatly reduced. Is there anything in the stimulus that may help you reach the conclusion? In our case if a lot of people started walking instead of driving it would greatly reduce the pollution.

So we only have enough information to go from if a lot of people walked instead of driving we can greatly reduce the pollution. But our argument assumes we have enough to conclude about if people walked whenever it is feasible for them to do it. So it must be the case that the author connects the two things. If people walked whenever it was feasible a lot of people would be actually walk instead of driving. Which is what answer choice E addresses.

Let me know if that was helpful.