Necessary Assumptions

cassiezbylut

Hi all, I have been tracking necessary questions for about two weeks. I was on a roll getting 5/5’s from the syllabus course and now the questions are getting harder and harder and I’m not quite able to negate as fast, nor do I understand what I am negating half the time or how I come up with the right answer for these harder questions. I’m going to be honest, it’s the stimulus that I flat out don’t understand sometimes and I always eliminate down to two answer choices and choose the wrong one still (again choosing the wrong one because I can’t negate very well). I always blind review and watch the explanation videos but it’s always until after does it make sense. I can’t seem to make this jump on my own. 2 weeks ago, weaken questions were my worst and I drilled and drilled and now I get them all right, but these necessary assumption ones are the death of me. Can someone try to dumb it down for me since obviously I can’t get it? Thank you, I am not a quitter but I am getting really discouraged on this particular question type.

elevator_music

I'm not sure I can say anything that you probably haven't read before but I could definitely walk you through one NA question that you are having trouble with or haven't done yet. But in general, NA is something that MUST be true given the argument. So for example:

Every Wednesday I buy apples.
Today is a Wednesday

---

Therefore I will buy apples

NA: Would be something like "Every Wednesday I buy fruit" because all apples are fruit, thus it MUST be true that I buy at lease some fruit on Wednesdays. If you negate that--it's not true that every Wednesday I buy fruit--well, that would completely destroy my argument because I clearly say that I do buy fruit (i.e. apples) every Wednesday.

Obviously this is a super easy NA example and they can get really tough. For whatever reason, NA did not click for me until I got the hang of SA. Have you already covered as SA? Sometimes I feel like having the two to compare and contrast can really make a difference. Also, more of a general advice that works for your problem with NA is to try to never move on to the answer choices until you fully understand the stim, which is ever more important with SA, NA type questions (I think). So when you are still learning NA, make sure you take the time to really get the stim, and hold off on the really difficult NA questions until you are comfortable with easy and medium ones. And finally, at least in my case I no longer have to negate the answer choices, I kind of just know/feel/anticipate what the answer is going to look like so the process definitely speeds up.

cassiezbylut

Thank you so much @elevator_music!!! Will be giving these a try this week.

Slow is Fast

This is how I understand NA questions conceptually.

Imagine the argument as a Jenga tower you're trying to build. Each premise is a layer you put down, so you build the tower up and up. In this way, you build an argument up and up as you provide more premises. The conclusion will sit at the top of the foundation of premises.

A necessary assumption is the one premise/block that the entire structure depends on. It is the one piece that keeps the tower/argument standing upright. Removing this one super important piece is equivalent to negating it. You take out/negate this one single piece-- the argument tower topples. That's why this one piece was so necessary to the entire structure.