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I’m led to this question because of these steps (below) that I took lol. Correct me at any point if there is a flaw in how I went about it!
In 72-2-25, /A and /B strengthens A cause B. We want to strengthen the argument’s assumption by showing that A causes B (buy online cause /use car), so we say /A and /B (/buy online and use car). This makes sense to me intuitively because the CAC is saying that /cause correlated with /effect, which strengthens the relationship between cause and effect.
OK SO, IF /A ← correlated→ /B strengthens A -cause-> B (what we have above - no cause and no effect strengthens cause → effect ), does that mean:
A -cause-> B, which implies A ← correlated→ B, implies /A ← correlated → /B?
And if the answer is yes or no, is there a cleaner theoretical reason why?
*footnote: I shortened direct mail advertising (buy phone or online) from 72-2-25 to just “buy online” to focus purely on the theory part. From 72-2-25: https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-72-section-2-question-25/, but this idea has also come up for me as a question in other causation q's.
Comments
I think the answer would be yes only if there was causation on top of the correlation.
For example, if there was a correlation between eating meat (A) and heart disease (B) and studies have proven eating meat does increase rates of heart disease, then I believe in this case /A is correlated with /B.
However, if wasn't the case there was causation and the A, B correlation was in fact just mere coincident, I don't think it would imply a /A correlation with /B as a change in one (to zero in this case) wouldn't affect the other.
Ah that makes sense. Then let's say we don't have a correlation yet, and we want to establish one. We have some premise (let's say A is coincidental with B ). We want to claim A is correlated with B.
Would saying /A correlated with /B strengthen (not necessarily have to imply) that A is correlated with B?
Because if what we said earlier that A correlated with B doesn't imply /A correlated with /B, then the answer to that question would be no? But intuitively it seems like yes, it does strengthen.
That would be invalid
A-->B Valid
B-->A Invalid
/A--->/B Invalid
/B--->/A Valid
*You're better of just memorizing these rules
If two things are correlated, yes, they are both correlated with each other. Co- means jointly, relate, well you know what that means. Their is some kind of numerical relationship between both of them.
A positive correlation between A and B means that generally, when there is more of A, there is more of B, or when there is less of A, there is less of B.
Just remember that correlation **NEVER ** equals causation.
That being said, the question you mentioned does not involve correlation in choosing the correct answer. The argument does claim a cause, however. The idea is that, because cars cause pollution, ordering from home decreases pollution because it doesn't involve the use of a car to go get that thing.
B strengthens it because it suggests that these were things that people already wanted, and would have in fact used their cars to go get those things.