The "Should" Principle

attorneysomerville

"Finding the conclusion" is as easy as riding a bicycle... and as hard, for struggling students.

I have noticed that the word "should" is as helpful as "thus" or "therefore" when it comes to finding a conclusion. Unlike the typical conclusion keywords, "should" appears in conclusions because conclusions tend to be recommendations, predictions, and judgments. (See Kaplan's list of six conclusion types for more on this.) "Should" can be used for all three of those sentence forms.

Sometimes "should" appears in a premise as well as the conclusion. This routinely happens in moral arguments (we should obey the law, the law says drive 55, therefore we should drive 55). While it is possible to use "should" in a premise but not in the conclusion, I have yet to find example of that happening in a published LSAT question.

As usual, I'm looking for criticism (constructive or otherwise) and counterexamples. This may not be a big deal for you folks who have been riding your bicycle for years, but it's a small step forward for the folks who are still on training wheels.

quinnxzhang

@attorneysomerville said:
While it is possible to use "should" in a premise but not in the conclusion, I have yet to find example of that happening in a published LSAT question.

From 2 minutes of searching, PT9 S2 Q20.

@attorneysomerville said:
I'm looking for criticism

This heuristic is much worse than your "some people say" heuristic. There's absolutely no reason to interpret "should" as a conclusion indicator. I'd understand looking for phrases like "therefore" or "thus", but "should" just expresses some sort of normativity or expectation, which can be anywhere in an argument.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but broadly speaking, your tutoring strategy strikes me as fundamentally wrong-headed. This thread and the "some people say" thread suggest that you're trying to find mechanical shortcuts that students can use to improve their score. And they probably work decently well.

But these mechanical shortcuts hurt students in the long run, and miss the idea behind the LSAT. Expressions like "should" won't always indicate a conclusion in law school, nor in discourse more generally. Neither will "some people say" always indicate a position the author disagrees with. Yes, your goal should be to improve students' LSAT scores, but not at the expense of teaching them to think critically and analyze argument structure properly. This is a skill that needs to be developed, and students scoring in the 130s, struggling to find the conclusion of an argument, clearly have not developed it. I worry that giving them a mechanical shortcut does nothing to encourage them to develop this skill.

In the best case scenario, students understand that this is a (very weak) heuristic and eventually learn how to identify argument parts by developing a deeper understanding of how arguments are structured. But why risk the worst case scenario, where a student blindly applies this rule, maybe scores a few points higher on the LSAT, but has no deeper understanding of how arguments are structured and maybe even tries to extend this very bad heuristic beyond the LSAT?

BruiserWoods

I mean... I guess it could be the case that should indicates a conclusion in some cases, but it would be strictly semantic. That is to say, sometimes it could, sometimes it couldn't. I don't think this is a good blanket rule.

Cant Get Right

I'd take your criticism even further @BruiserWoods . I'm not sure "should" can ever indicate a conclusion. It can certainly be present or not in a conclusion, but even when it is I don't think it can ever function in a way that would make it an indicator.

I've got to agree with @quinnxzhang . I have great respect for this test, and I think strategies like these really deny students the opportunity to develop critical thinking and logical reasoning skills that they really need, not just on the LSAT but in law school and in life. I know in many respects it's a dumbed down logic, but all the same, I actually feel like I'm not just improving my prospects for schools by pushing my score higher, but also that I'm improving myself. Strategies like these simultaneously set a very low plateau on what score a student can ultimately achieve, and teach them unsound reasoning which can never be applied outside of the world of the LSAT.

I get the mentality that some people just aren't going to improve significantly, and that maybe these people should be taught differently. But I think that approach is fundamentally flawed and hugely unfair to those students. If they are denied the strategies that they would need to develop a sophisticated understanding of this test because they are judged to be unlikely to do well, then they are denied even the opportunity to excel.

This is what I love so much about 7Sage. It is a holistic approach that teaches not "how to score high on the LSAT," but rather the underlying skills which are required to do so. I just think that's the only way to go.

BruiserWoods

@"Cant Get Right" said:
I'm not sure "should" can ever indicate a conclusion. It can certainly be present or not in a conclusion, but even when it is I don't think it can ever function in a way that would make it an indicator

You right. I didn't think it through. This is what I was trying to say. It could be there in the sentence sitting next to other words in the conclusion, but like? It isn't an indicator. #badlinguist

attorneysomerville

You guys are truly terrific. Thank you for your honest feedback, and the broader perspective on the LSAT that informs it.


That said... Quinnxzhang, what do you perceive to be the conclusion in PT9.S2.Q20? I think it is "A university should not be entitled to patent the inventions of its faculty members." Do you disagree with that? If so, what do you perceive as the conclusion, and why?

quinnxzhang

@attorneysomerville said:
That said... Quinnxzhang, what do you perceive to be the conclusion in PT9.S2.Q20? I think it is "A university should not be entitled to patent the inventions of its faculty members." Do you disagree with that? If so, what do you perceive as the conclusion, and why?

I agree that that's the conclusion. However, you claimed that you hadn't come across an LSAT question where "should" is being used in a premise. One of the premises of PT9 S2 Q20 is "Universities, as guarantors of intellectual freedom, **should** encourage the free flow of ideas and general dissemination of knowledge." [emphasis mine]. If this isn't the kind of counterexample you were looking for, then I apologize and feel free to disregard.

Edit: Nevermind, I reread your OP. I misread you to be asking for questions that use "should" in a premise, instead of questions that use "should" in a premise and not the conclusion. Nevertheless, I stand by the rest of my comments.

attorneysomerville

I'm sorry, @quinnxzhang, I miscommunicated. What I TRIED to say (as clearly as possible) was that "IF the word should appears in a stimulus, THEN it appears in the conclusion." In a moral argument, "should" often appears as a premise... but I have yet to find a moral argument that uses "should" in a premise but avoids the word in the conclusion.

As @can't_get_right noted earlier, these empirical observations are NOT logical rules. The fact that the LSAT writers tend to do the same things over and over is NOT proof that they will always do the same in the future.

That said... I'd like somebody to do a little more digging and come up with an actual counterexample. There are a lot of published tests out there...

quinnxzhang

@attorneysomerville said:
That said... I'd like somebody to do a little more digging and come up with an actual counterexample. There are a lot of published tests out there...

I did a bit more digging. PT77 S2 Q20 is a counterexample. The conclusion is "this is a specious distinction", and one of the premises is "no work should be [interpreted]". This isn't a moral "should", but morality isn't the only source of normativity, which is what "should" expresses.

I suspect there are more counterexamples, as it took me ~10-15 minutes to find that one. I still think this heuristic is a very bad one.

attorneysomerville

Good example, @quinnxzhang. Interesting example, too, since I had gone over it and used it to support the "some people say" principle (which I have discussed elsewhere) without noticing that it broke the "should" principle.

"Normative" is a better term than "moral" for this purpose. It expresses what I wanted to say much better than "moral" does, which has a lot of unnecessary connotations.

In light of the general feedback and specific counterexamples, I'm deleting the "should" principle.

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attorneysomerville

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