PT33.S1.Q20 - I thought we weren't allowed to attack the premises for strengthen/weaken questions

Ashley2018-1

So this particular question has about 8 years worth of comments and about as much time's worth of confusion regarding why D weakens the argument because it seems to be attacking a premise, namely the one stating that these painters have to eat sea animals on the way from Norway to these caves. My question is just how is D not just going after the premise of the argument? I thought we weren't supposed to do that but the vid explanation just accepts D as is.

The only observation I could make is that the premise isn't stating that the cave painters actually did eat animals, but that if they did make the journey from Norway to these islands, then they did have to eat sea animals. But even this principle or conditional is still a premise, so I'm still stuck. And the way the stimulus is written seems to confirm that the painters did make this journey.

As for the argument, I thought the stimulus was concluding that the rock paintings couldn't be a reflection of the painters' current diets because they didn't have sea animals (at last, none that were "unambiguously depicted") and they had to eat sea animals during the journey from N to those islands and my goal was to find answer choices that provided possible scenarios where the paintings did reflect current diets even if they didn't have sea animals on them.

Admin Note: https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-33-section-1-question-20/

Sar928412

I think the lessons on “Causation and Phenomenon-Hypothesis Questions” might be helpful to you, particularly the “Causation Strategy” PDF. In my mind, the author’s argument is the assumption that the painters must have eaten sea animals. The premise is the fact that the journey is long, and the conclusion is that the subject matter theory is wrong. We are free to attack the argument, and D offers a “competing explanation” to the seafood thing.

Even if I am incorrectly identifying the premise, argument, and conclusion (RIP), a diet containing dried meats wouldn’t preclude the painters from eating some seafood, as well, so the premise would be intact. They could have eaten both, perhaps with a higher ratio of dried meat to fish. Answer B on question 60.1.13 similarly appears to attack the premise, but JY has a great explanation on why it actually does not, which you may also find helpful.

This was a very thought-provoking question that I feel added to my own understanding, so thanks for posting!

yunonsie

I don't think (D) attacks the premise because we don't know where the painters came from. We just know that if they came from Norway, then they had to eat sea animals. But the painters could have sailed from Finland and survived the journey with advanced meat preservation techniques. The stimulus doesn't confirm that the journey was made from Norway, it only talks about an implication of that hypothetical situation.

Ashley2018-1

@yunonsie said:
I don't think (D) attacks the premise because we don't know where the painters came from. We just know that if they came from Norway, then they had to eat sea animals. But the painters could have sailed from Finland and survived the journey with advanced meat preservation techniques. The stimulus doesn't confirm that the journey was made from Norway, it only talks about an implication of that hypothetical situation.

But the video explanation seems to confirm that they did make the journey; jy says they made the journey but didn’t eat sea animals and he never goes back to clarify. I'm pretty sure he said that we aren't denying the premise because they did make the journey but didn't eat the sea animals, so if we deny that these painters made the journey, wouldn't that be denying the premises as well? Literally the whole comments section is littered with similar questions and it was never truly resolved.

Ashley2018-1

@Sar928412 said:
I think the lessons on “Causation and Phenomenon-Hypothesis Questions” might be helpful to you, particularly the “Causation Strategy” PDF. In my mind, the author’s argument is the assumption that the painters must have eaten sea animals. The premise is the fact that the journey is long, and the conclusion is that the subject matter theory is wrong. We are free to attack the argument, and D offers a “competing explanation” to the seafood thing.

Even if I am incorrectly identifying the premise, argument, and conclusion (RIP), a diet containing dried meats wouldn’t preclude the painters from eating some seafood, as well, so the premise would be intact. They could have eaten both, perhaps with a higher ratio of dried meat to fish. Answer B on question 60.1.13 similarly appears to attack the premise, but JY has a great explanation on why it actually does not, which you may also find helpful.

This was a very thought-provoking question that I feel added to my own understanding, so thanks for posting!

But it's not an assumption; it's a premise that was stated explicitly. I'm pretty sure assumptions aren't explicitly stated. And there was no mention of a causal argument in the video explanation, nor did I see one.

Chris Nguyen

Hey there!

I would argue (D) is attacking the premise, and I would also say attacking a premise is a valid way of weakening an argument.

I know JY says that we shouldn't try to look for questions that attack the premise. It's because usually, 99% of the time, answer choices actually do not attack the premise, but they just look like they are attacking the premise, when in actually they are not (for example, conclusion is most dogs are cute and something that looks like an attack is "some dogs are not cute").

But, the 1% that it does come up and is actually truly attacking a premise is a valid way of weakening an answer choice.

So my take is be wary when you think an answer choice is attacking a premise and really check if it is or not. 99% of the time, it's not. But that's just 99% of the time

Ashley2018-1

@Christopherr said:
Hey there!

I would argue (D) is attacking the premise, and I would also say attacking a premise is a valid way of weakening an argument.

I know JY says that we shouldn't try to look for questions that attack the premise. It's because usually, 99% of the time, answer choices actually do not attack the premise, but they just look like they are attacking the premise, when in actually they are not (for example, conclusion is most dogs are cute and something that looks like an attack is "some dogs are not cute").

But, the 1% that it does come up and is actually truly attacking a premise is a valid way of weakening an answer choice.

So my take is be wary when you think an answer choice is attacking a premise and really check if it is or not. 99% of the time, it's not. But that's just 99% of the time

Oh hello, thank you for jumping in

So this question...is an exceptional case? As for your dogs example, doesn't that most statement leave open the possibility of having "some" dogs not being cute?

yunonsie

I know an answer choice need to be looked at by itself but (E) is getting at the same idea. What if the painters didn’t sail to and from Norway? (E) talks about them being indigenous. Then the conditional statement becomes irrelevant and it makes certain evidence ( the lack of sea creatures) less relevant and weaker.

Ashley2018-1

@yunonsie said:
I know an answer choice need to be looked at by itself but (E) is getting at the same idea. What if the painters didn’t sail to and from Norway? (E) talks about them being indigenous. Then the conditional statement becomes irrelevant and it makes certain evidence ( the lack of sea creatures) less relevant and weaker.

I thought of E differently; if E were true, then this choice isn't even talking about the cave painters the author is speaking of. This choice introduces a new group, the original inhabitants of the island, who were there before these painters came and they ate land animals, which would explain why there aren't any sea animals in these paintings.

yunonsie

How does that explain why there aren’t sea animals? If they were two separate groups then how does the diet of indigenous people affect the painters?

Sar928412

@Ashley2018 said:

@Sar928412 said:
I think the lessons on “Causation and Phenomenon-Hypothesis Questions” might be helpful to you, particularly the “Causation Strategy” PDF. In my mind, the author’s argument is the assumption that the painters must have eaten sea animals. The premise is the fact that the journey is long, and the conclusion is that the subject matter theory is wrong. We are free to attack the argument, and D offers a “competing explanation” to the seafood thing.

Even if I am incorrectly identifying the premise, argument, and conclusion (RIP), a diet containing dried meats wouldn’t preclude the painters from eating some seafood, as well, so the premise would be intact. They could have eaten both, perhaps with a higher ratio of dried meat to fish. Answer B on question 60.1.13 similarly appears to attack the premise, but JY has a great explanation on why it actually does not, which you may also find helpful.

This was a very thought-provoking question that I feel added to my own understanding, so thanks for posting!

But it's not an assumption; it's a premise that was stated explicitly. I'm pretty sure assumptions aren't explicitly stated. And there was no mention of a causal argument in the video explanation, nor did I see one.

Let me try rephrasing. Because the journey is long, the author assumes the painters must have eaten something besides meat. Being at sea, he assumes this would cause them to eat seafood. That's the series of assumptions as I interpreted them, which is what I meant when I vaguely wrote that the "assumption" is eating seafood. This is why I found this question to be so difficult, personally.

But again, because we know D is an incorrect answer, we know for certain that it does not attack the premise. I think this is because of the blurring of assumptions versus premise that I am (badly) attempting to explain, but more obviously so because of my second point in my og comment about how eating meat would not preclude eating seafood.

I don't know that I can explain this any differently, so hopefully someone else comes up with something a bit more helpful to you. Good luck!

Ashley2018-1

@yunonsie said:
How does that explain why there aren’t sea animals? If they were two separate groups then how does the diet of indigenous people affect the painters?

Because it explains why the paintings didn't depict sea animals but could still portray the painters' current diets; if it were the original inhabitants who painted the things, then it's understandable why the paintings had land animals...because that is what they ate

HopefullyHLS

Too lazy to read the LR question or the comments above, but:

for a right AC, it is allowed to attack the premise of an argument. It's just that in 99.9% of the time, LSAC doesn't do it because then the question would be too easy. What they frequently do is building wrong AC in a way that it makes you think that the AC attacks the premise, but it really doesn't.

Burden.of.Floof

Jumping in here to see if I can help, one of the things that I love about this test is there are many ways you can look at something and still be correct! I think you could look at it two different ways:

1) AC D is in fact, attacking a premise. In that case, I 100% agree with what other people wrote... this doesn't happen very often, but it can happen. Since this is a Weaken EXCEPT question, any answer choice that Weakens the argument, even if it's not by much should be crossed out.

OR

2) It's still a premise, but AC D isn't attacking it. This can be reasoned because, and I know someone mentioned this above... we just need it to be the case that they ate other things besides the sea animals. So, it still could be true that they needed to eat sea creatures, but they were able to supplement the diet with the dried meats that they brought on their boats for the journey. That would mean that they therefore did eat other things besides sea food, and it would weaken the idea that seafood must be depicted in the cave paintings in order for it to be true that they depicted what they ate.

I hope this helps!

Ashley2018-1

@"Burden.of.Floof" said:
Jumping in here to see if I can help, one of the things that I love about this test is there are many ways you can look at something and still be correct! I think you could look at it two different ways:

1) AC D is in fact, attacking a premise. In that case, I 100% agree with what other people wrote... this doesn't happen very often, but it can happen. Since this is a Weaken EXCEPT question, any answer choice that Weakens the argument, even if it's not by much should be crossed out.

OR

2) It's still a premise, but AC D isn't attacking it. This can be reasoned because, and I know someone mentioned this above... we just need it to be the case that they ate other things besides the sea animals. So, it still could be true that they needed to eat sea creatures, but they were able to supplement the diet with the dried meats that they brought on their boats for the journey. That would mean that they therefore did eat other things besides sea food, and it would weaken the idea that seafood must be depicted in the cave paintings in order for it to be true that they depicted what they ate.

I hope this helps!

Then when the stimulus says the paintings depicted the painters' diet, does that mean it didn't need to depict their entire diet, but just enough of it? That's the only way I could think of your second point working. The painters did eat sea animals during their journey but ate preserved meats as well, so even if the paintings didn't depict sea animals, it still depicted their current diets because they were in fact eating preserved meats.

Burden.of.Floof

@Ashley2018 exactly! And that's one of the implicit assumptions made, in my opinion. The author is assuming that the cave paintings depicted the entire diet. But the predominant theory never says that the cave paintings depict everything that they ate.

Ashley2018-1

@"Burden.of.Floof" said:
@Ashley2018 exactly! And that's one of the implicit assumptions made, in my opinion. The author is assuming that the cave paintings depicted the entire diet. But the predominant theory never says that the cave paintings depict everything that they ate.

Thank you for hopping in!

I suppose I have one final thing...I also assumed that current diet meant entire current diet, so what proportion of food has to depicted on these cave paintings to constitute as depicting their current diet? like "most"? I know it can't be some because it's just too weak, some might be like one slice of preserved meat.

Burden.of.Floof

I think can be some because the predominant theory's language leaves plenty of room for it.

"They were largely a description of the current diets of the painters"

Any evidence that they ate anything other than seafood, no matter the quantity would weaken the argument. It wouldn't weaken it by much, for example if everyone just ate one slice of preserved meat once in a while, but it would weaken it. You can see that in the answer choices as well, most of the weakeners imply that they ate something other than seafood.

You could break it down even further and say, well what is sufficient to be a part of someone's diet? If I only eat a slice of cake once a year, is that enough to say that it's a part of my diet? Maybe not part of my regular diet, but could be part of my diet. Who knows... these are questions that I don't think the stimulus is designed to handle, because we simply aren't given that much information. But it is a fun thought experiment!

elevator_music

I'll throw my two cents in.
1 We are given a conditional statement as a premise (if traveled to and from then would've eaten sea food), however, this being a conditional statement we are not supposed to take it as a fact that has actually occurred already, although the author of the argument certainly makes that assumption or they would not have made their conclusion.

2 the conditional statement does not necessarily talk about the process of initial settlement of the islands---we know this because of "long journey to and FROM the islands"--honestly, this sounds like the author assumes they maybe traded with the mainland or maybe were looking to bring in food they couldn't grow themselves, or even pigment for their paintings, etc because generally you do not go "to and from" when you are settling a place (or that is not how it would be described).

3 We do not know how often this travel occurred, whether you take it as meaning the original settlement or possible trade (et al), so because we don't know how often it happened and over what course of time the paintings were done they could have still depicted the "current" diet while still doing this other stuff, it's just that if they were going to and from once every few years and the paintings were done in the interim then one would not assume it would have these "exotic" sea foods depicted because they wouldn't have been eaten at that particular time on the islands.

So there are definitely assumptions that the argument makes, but we simply cannot assume that just because a conditional is present that it has actually happened. Think of it this way: you are doing a LG and you are told "if B is in 3 then D is in 5" would you go ahead and place B3 and D5? No, because it is a conditional that has not been triggered, so it's not the case that Bs and D5 must occur. It's the same idea here, If A then B does not mean we have to take it as a fact that has happened. The argument makes that error and that is why the conclusion does not follow.

Finally, I think you can interpret D in two ways: 1 as some have pointed out, it could be challenging a premise (by triggering the sufficient we know that they would have had to eat this type of fish) by saying that they actually had other means of feeding themselves. There's no rule that you can't do that on the LSAT, it's just that they don't do it on the test because mostly it would make our life too easy (and in the real world you absolutely would go after someone's argument if it was factually incorrect). 2 Even if you don't kick the sufficient (so no one travelled to and from) then it is still somewhat weakens the conclusion in that it is somewhat similar to A in this regard. Basically, when on the island these people had another reason why they did not need to rely on or source fish, since they had awesome jerky.

Ashley2018-1

@elevator_music said:
I'll throw my two cents in.
1 We are given a conditional statement as a premise (if traveled to and from then would've eaten sea food), however, this being a conditional statement we are not supposed to take it as a fact that has actually occurred already, although the author of the argument certainly makes that assumption or they would not have made their conclusion.

2 the conditional statement does not necessarily talk about the process of initial settlement of the islands---we know this because of "long journey to and FROM the islands"--honestly, this sounds like the author assumes they maybe traded with the mainland or maybe were looking to bring in food they couldn't grow themselves, or even pigment for their paintings, etc because generally you do not go "to and from" when you are settling a place (or that is not how it would be described).

3 We do not know how often this travel occurred, whether you take it as meaning the original settlement or possible trade (et al), so because we don't know how often it happened and over what course of time the paintings were done they could have still depicted the "current" diet while still doing this other stuff, it's just that if they were going to and from once every few years and the paintings were done in the interim then one would not assume it would have these "exotic" sea foods depicted because they wouldn't have been eaten at that particular time on the islands.

So there are definitely assumptions that the argument makes, but we simply cannot assume that just because a conditional is present that it has actually happened. Think of it this way: you are doing a LG and you are told "if B is in 3 then D is in 5" would you go ahead and place B3 and D5? No, because it is a conditional that has not been triggered, so it's not the case that Bs and D5 must occur. It's the same idea here, If A then B does not mean we have to take it as a fact that has happened. The argument makes that error and that is why the conclusion does not follow.

Finally, I think you can interpret D in two ways: 1 as some have pointed out, it could be challenging a premise (by triggering the sufficient we know that they would have had to eat this type of fish) by saying that they actually had other means of feeding themselves. There's no rule that you can't do that on the LSAT, it's just that they don't do it on the test because mostly it would make our life too easy (and in the real world you absolutely would go after someone's argument if it was factually incorrect). 2 Even if you don't kick the sufficient (so no one travelled to and from) then it is still somewhat weakens the conclusion in that it is somewhat similar to A in this regard. Basically, when on the island these people had another reason why they did not need to rely on or source fish, since they had awesome jerky.

Thank you for pitching in...yeah, I didn't think of that. I suppose the journey and what they were eating while doing the paintings could be two different things with two different diets.

I actually have another question I asked on the forum today; it's about another question. Would you be able to answer it too?

elevator_music

@Ashley2018 said:

I actually have another question I asked on the forum today; it's about another question. Would you be able to answer it too?

Sure, although I can't promise it will be helpful.