Struggling with PSAr but not SA?

rmjjy117

I am not struggling with SA as much but am consistently getting 1-2 PSAr questions wrong on every test - is there anything else I can refer to learn more about PSAr or how to address these types of questions? I did look through the Lesson but was only able to find a video on solving a PSAr question. Thank you!

troysch1

Not a 7sage resource, but from what i see in tutoring clients-stylistically a big difference is that your SA really link up your premises right? You have some A->B, C->D, and if you do the work you can find B->C in the answer choices (95% of the time. love that if one question where it's "If A->B->C->D", and the right answer choice is just "A," but I digress).

In PSAr, you're using an abstract principle to help you link up B->C. So there's a bit more flexiblity/interpretation you need to have in your answer choices to see "well, would we fall under the principle to allow it to hook these two things up?"

In particular, where I see folks often go wrong, is when a principle is broader then it needs to be, or latches onto one premise versus a more expected one, they don't recognize how it fits. On PSAr, broad/strong is great! If "most As are Bs" is enough to guarantee the conclusion, an answer choice that says "all As are Bs" is stronger than you need, but that's totally fine!

tl;dr the big shift is in thinking through answer choices more tactically than SA and how they'd apply to the gap you should have found when working through the argument.

Hope that helps would be happy to take a whirl through one you missed as a more concrete example.

1stWorldProblems

I think psudo is more 'alternate universe' than SA? someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Heyhey1234

Hey! I recently found out a way to figure out SA+PSA. Both questions require the answer so that the premise has to be the reason for the conclusion to happen. For example,

For pt58 s1 #23
the premise that supports the conclusion stating that we should impose tariff blah blah is " This will result in farmland's blah blah consquent vanishing of unique way of life"

So in this PSA question, losing unique way of life has to be significant enough to impose tariff on all the consumers.
That is why the only answer c) social concerns should take precedence sometimes over economic efficiency

this was the only answer that mentioned social concern = aka unique way of life
The only difference between PSA and SA is that SA will be more obvious than PSA