Difficulty Understanding Support!

Shrilaraune

Based on the LR problems I'm getting wrong (Weakening/Strengthening, Necessary Assumption, MSS, etc.) I think I'm having difficulty understanding support. Or at least understanding it concretely. For example with weaken questions, I know that I can't weaken the premises or the conclusion, and I know the "right" questions to ask (Even given these premises, the conclusion still doesn't necessarily follow because...) but unless the weaken question has causal or conditional reasoning it it, I'm not really sure how to approach it (aside from just kind of feeling it out). I have absolutely no problem finding the premises and conclusion and understanding which is which, or mapping out arguments. But the idea of support still feels kind of nebulous to me. If you have any ideas on how to make support more concrete, or suggestions on what made the concept click for you I'd really appreciate it!

studyingandrestudying

Necessary, sufficient, and contrapositive are important. Are these things clear? Also maybe read about fallacies--there's a blog article on here called Common Flaws. What are some ones you got incorrect? Maybe the most important thing is staying with it and not giving up.

Shrilaraune

@lsatplaylist said:
Necessary, sufficient, and contrapositive are important. Are these things clear? Also maybe read about fallacies--there's a blog article on here called Common Flaws. What are some ones you got incorrect? Maybe the most important thing is staying with it and not giving up.

Yup those are crystal clear. My logic game is very strong.
Could you unpack "staying with it"? What would that entail? A lot of them were level 5 hard so there's that, but still. They are the only type I'm consistently struggling with

Examples of some that I've gotten wrong:
PT60 S1 Q13
PT75 S3 Q13
PT64 S3 Q15
PT64 S1 Q13
PT60 S1 Q16
PT75 S1 Q11

Most of these are from PTs I took earlier on, but I still haven't conquered Weakening especially.

I'll definitely look into the fallacies. Thank you!

fycw2068

It seems like the issue might be that you are misunderstanding the objective of strengthen/weaken questions which is why you might be struggling with these questions. In S/W questions, understanding the rules of logic is only important to the extent that you're able to identify the argument.

It is a given that the arguments presented in S/W questions are all valid. The objective in a weaken question isn't to make an argument invalid or create a flaw in reasoning... the objective in a weaken question is to damage the quality of the argument (and in some cases the correct answer will in fact make an argument invalid, but it doesn't have to).

S/W questions are testing your ability to impact the quality of an argument, not the validity. Remember that good/strong and bad/weak have nothing to do with valid and invalid. An argument could be terribly weak, but perfectly valid.

If it's the case that you do, in fact, have the correct understanding of the objective of S/W questions, then seems like it's about working on your "quality game" which I do feel is a separate skill from having a strong grasp on logic rules (https://7sage.com/lesson/good-v-bad-arguments/ -- also, the strengthen/weaken lessons have good discussions/examples in the comment sections).

I looked at PT 64 questions and thought I'd share my thought process/internal dialogue in case it's helpful:

S1. Q13.
1. Glance at q stem, determine it's a weaken question
2. ok, so I'll need to poke holes in the argument
3. read stimulus
4. this is the only part that matters in the stim: "both groups of joggers incurred roughly the same # of injuries, therefore, this indicates that stretching before jogging does not help to prevent injuries"
5. What if those that didn't stretch jogged for less time or jogged an easier path? Or what if people who stretched are more accident prone and so would've incurred MORE injuries if they didn't stretch?
6. argument sucks because it leaves out info about the characteristics of each group, so answer will probably have something to do with a difference in the groups' probability of getting injured

scan answers

D is the only option that does this

S3. Q15:
1. Glance at q stem, determine it's a weaken question
2. ok so have to figure out how this argument can get worse
3. read stim
4. lots going on, but essentially the columnist's argument is "council hired an adviser and therefore has made an investment that will likely have a big payoff because other cities in the region that devoted resources to econ dev planning earned large ROIs."
5. what were the devoted resources of the other cities and is hiring an adviser the equivalent of those resources? is this city in the same/similar economic position as the other cities when they started investing?
6. argument sucks because there are too many weak parallels so right answer will probably highlight difference in impact of the nature of the investment that was made AND/OR difference in characteristics of the 2 cities

_scan answers

B is only option that addresses one of the weak parallels

Shrilaraune

@yafrcho said:
It seems like the issue might be that you are misunderstanding the objective of strengthen/weaken questions which is why you might be struggling with these questions. In S/W questions, understanding the rules of logic is only important to the extent that you're able to identify the argument.

It is a given that the arguments presented in S/W questions are all valid. The objective in a weaken question isn't to make an argument invalid or create a flaw in reasoning... the objective in a weaken question is to damage the quality of the argument (and in some cases the correct answer will in fact make an argument invalid, but it doesn't have to).

S/W questions are testing your ability to impact the quality of an argument, not the validity. Remember that good/strong and bad/weak have nothing to do with valid and invalid. An argument could be terribly weak, but perfectly valid.

If it's the case that you do, in fact, have the correct understanding of the objective of S/W questions, then seems like it's about working on your "quality game" which I do feel is a separate skill from having a strong grasp on logic rules (https://7sage.com/lesson/good-v-bad-arguments/ -- also, the strengthen/weaken lessons have good discussions/examples in the comment sections).

I looked at PT 64 questions and thought I'd share my thought process/internal dialogue in case it's helpful:

S1. Q13.
1. Glance at q stem, determine it's a weaken question
2. ok, so I'll need to poke holes in the argument
3. read stimulus
4. this is the only part that matters in the stim: "both groups of joggers incurred roughly the same # of injuries, therefore, this indicates that stretching before jogging does not help to prevent injuries"
5. What if those that didn't stretch jogged for less time or jogged an easier path? Or what if people who stretched are more accident prone and so would've incurred MORE injuries if they didn't stretch?
6. argument sucks because it leaves out info about the characteristics of each group, so answer will probably have something to do with a difference in the groups' probability of getting injured

scan answers

D is the only option that does this

S3. Q15:
1. Glance at q stem, determine it's a weaken question
2. ok so have to figure out how this argument can get worse
3. read stim
4. lots going on, but essentially the columnist's argument is "council hired an adviser and therefore has made an investment that will likely have a big payoff because other cities in the region that devoted resources to econ dev planning earned large ROIs."
5. what were the devoted resources of the other cities and is hiring an adviser the equivalent of those resources? is this city in the same/similar economic position as the other cities when they started investing?
6. argument sucks because there are too many weak parallels so right answer will probably highlight difference in impact of the nature of the investment that was made AND/OR difference in characteristics of the 2 cities

_scan answers

B is only option that addresses one of the weak parallels

Thank you so much! This is so helpful! You've perfectly articulated my issue--my quality game. Thank you! I'll keep an eye on the comments in the weakening lessons for more discussion of this. I also realized that I may actually have recorded my answer incorrectly for S3 Q15 in PT 64, but seeing your process for both of these questions was really helpful.

joycool9567

I had an exactly same issue when I took LSAT and I think your answer was quite well addressed already but I'll just write out what I think my problem was.

For me, MSS questions were what gave me the most trouble. Sometimes, answer for MSS question is a necessary assumption, sometimes it literally is the mostly strongly supported inference (like quasi-MBT.) And the ambiguity and randomness of how some of the MSS answers could be had given me some serious headaches.

I think why I had trouble tackling MSS questions was because I tried to eliminate answers rather than making the most-likely inference. I used negation for most of the inference type questions such as strengthen and weaken and usually it had no problem. And for some MSS questions, approaching to negate answers does work.

My problem was that I tried really hard to look for the reason why certain something could be wrong in all answers. Although I knew I shouldn't do it, it is just that my way of thinking is so attuned to finding reason "why not" rather than "why it is" when approaching MSS questions. All the answers in MSS questions, on most of the occasions, are never MBT. And many wrong choices are also could be true ( merely because they are irrelevant to the stimulus, therefore, strictly could be true.) The aim of "support" of "MSS" was to select answers that have the highest probability and minimum contact to the stimulus. Changing my habit of looking for why not? on answer choices and thinking "why correct?" helped me improve on MSS type questions. Although I am not sure this was the problem you had in mind when you posted the question.

Shrilaraune

@joycool9567 said:
I had an exactly same issue when I took LSAT and I think your answer was quite well addressed already but I'll just write out what I think my problem was.

For me, MSS questions were what gave me the most trouble. Sometimes, answer for MSS question is a necessary assumption, sometimes it literally is the mostly strongly supported inference (like quasi-MBT.) And the ambiguity and randomness of how some of the MSS answers could be had given me some serious headaches.

I think why I had trouble tackling MSS questions was because I tried to eliminate answers rather than making the most-likely inference. I used negation for most of the inference type questions such as strengthen and weaken and usually it had no problem. And for some MSS questions, approaching to negate answers does work.

My problem was that I tried really hard to look for the reason why certain something could be wrong in all answers. Although I knew I shouldn't do it, it is just that my way of thinking is so attuned to finding reason "why not" rather than "why it is" when approaching MSS questions. All the answers in MSS questions, on most of the occasions, are never MBT. And many wrong choices are also could be true ( merely because they are irrelevant to the stimulus, therefore, strictly could be true.) The aim of "support" of "MSS" was to select answers that have the highest probability and minimum contact to the stimulus. Changing my habit of looking for why not? on answer choices and thinking "why correct?" helped me improve on MSS type questions. Although I am not sure this was the problem you had in mind when you posted the question.

Thanks so much for chiming in! This is actually pretty interesting, as I am having difficulty with inference questions in general--so that includes MSS. I suspect, I may be doing the same thing as you were, trying to eliminate answer choices rather than looking for why something might be the case given the stimulus. I had a couple of questions if that's alright?

1. You mentioned using negation in most of the inference type questions--could you tell me more about what you mean? I'm not sure I've encountered that (or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying).
2. You also mentioned looking for answers with the "highest probability and minimum contact to the stimulus"? Could you tell me what you mean by that last part? Minimum contact to the stimulus?
   Thank you!

Shrilaraune

I just wanted to pay it forward for anyone who comes to the forums, sees my question (s) and is like, "Oh my gosh me too!"

Everywhere I went, people spoke about this thing between the premises and the conclusion and how that was the thing we wanted to attack or strengthen or point to. Powerscore, especially is guilty of suggesting this without actually saying it concretely. 7 sage is better in that it is clear about this--the distinction between what we want to effect in an argument and the different parts that make up the argument. As it turns out, what I needed for this to be clear to me was a slightly different perspective. Enter the LSAT trainer--which has been closing up all the tiny gaps I've had in my understanding and explaining all the things that have confounded me for the last few months. The LSAT trainer is often recommended by fellow 7 sagers, and I wish I had started looking through it earlier! Then again, I think the rock solid control I have over logic and the different question types makes the LSAT Trainer doubly useful so...YMMV.

To answer this question: The thing between the Premises and the Conclusion is the reasoning. Or as is usually the case, what is wrong with the reasoning.

Direct from the trainer on Wea Questions:
"Figure out what is wrong with the argument (which is much easier to do after reading the trainer but basically means figure out why the premises don't guarantee the conclusion), then select the answer that exposes that flaw. Tempting wrong answers will relate to the conclusion or the support (premises), but not the problem that exists between them . Remember to treat each answer choice as being true.

Boom.
Yoda'd

studyingandrestudying

Maybe consider upgrading to Ultimate. You'll get more materials that way. I've never regretted upgrading.

Shrilaraune

@lsatplaylist said:
Maybe consider upgrading to Ultimate. You'll get more materials that way. I've never regretted upgrading.

Thanks for the suggestion!
I was actually an Ultimate customer waaaay back in the day, so I know what you mean. But I've got so many materials at this point that I think I'm good! Naturally, I'll keep buying PTs from 7sage, but I think that's all I'll need from this point!