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Causation weakening vs. Causation strength

LSATcantwinLSATcantwin Alum Member Sage ⭐
in Logical Reasoning 13286 karma

So I'm working on these question types and have found a pattern. When it is a Causation strengthen question, the answer choice becomes apparent very quickly to me. I am able to identify it, and explain why the rest are wrong with a decent amount of ease. Once the question stem changes to weaken however, I no longer can see the answer and missed all of them. J.Y. said in his explanation that these two types of questions are really the same when it comes down to identifying the answer choice. So what am I doing wrong?

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  • nessa.k13.0nessa.k13.0 Inactive ⭐
    edited May 2017 4141 karma

    Hi @LSATcantwin it seems like you could be having an issue seeing how the given reasons in a stimulus do not lead to the conclusion or you could be having trouble understanding how to do the task of weakening an argument correctly--let me know which you think it is (or if it's neither) so that I can try to give you more direct advice. One thing I do is ask myself why does A cause B? You can't attack the conclusion but you need to attack the reasoning.
    You have to be extremely critical here. With weakening questions you need to somehow create a situation where A does cause B. You can do that in a few ways: by saying something else causes the conclusion or by choosing something where no relationship between the things in the stimulus is possible. Let me know if you are seeing any of this or not.

  • LSATcantwinLSATcantwin Alum Member Sage ⭐
    13286 karma

    @"nessa.k13.0" said:
    Hi @LSATcantwin it seems like you could be having an issue seeing how the given reasons in a stimulus do not lead to the conclusion or you could be having trouble understanding how to do the task of weakening an argument correctly--let me know which you think it is (or if it's neither) so that I can try to give you more direct advice. One thing I do is ask myself why does A cause B? You can't attack the conclusion but you need to attack the reasoning.
    You have to be extremely critical here. With weakening questions you need to somehow create a situation where A does cause B. You can do that in a few ways: by saying something else causes the conclusion or by choosing something where no relationship between the things in the stimulus is possible. Let me know if you are seeing any of this or not.

    On regular weaken questions I do fine. It's just the causation ones.

    This might sound strange, but it feels like there are too many possible ways to weaken the causation argument. I can think of many reasons why A -> B. This means when I'm reading through the answer choices I can't quickly identify one because I can't clearly see which one actually does weaken the argument. When I'm strengthening an argument, the answer choice becomes evident right away because I see the gaps that need to be filled and only one answer does that. I'm not sure this helps explain my problem any better?

  • nessa.k13.0nessa.k13.0 Inactive ⭐
    edited May 2017 4141 karma

    @LSATcantwin said:

    On regular weaken questions I do fine. It's just the causation ones.

    This might sound strange, but it feels like there are too many possible ways to weaken the causation argument. I can think of many reasons why A -> B. This means when I'm reading through the answer choices I can't quickly identify one because I can't clearly see which one actually does weaken the argument. When I'm strengthening an argument, the answer choice becomes evident right away because I see the gaps that need to be filled and only one answer does that. I'm not sure this helps explain my problem any better?

    @LSATcantwin Yeah that does make sense to me. In the beginning I had issues understanding how it was okay and not okay to weaken arguments on the LSAT. Can you give me a question from the test that you worked on where this was an issue? (if you can please include why/how you eliminated or selected the answer choices)

  • LSATcantwinLSATcantwin Alum Member Sage ⭐
    edited May 2017 13286 karma

    @"nessa.k13.0" said:

    @LSATcantwin said:

    On regular weaken questions I do fine. It's just the causation ones.

    This might sound strange, but it feels like there are too many possible ways to weaken the causation argument. I can think of many reasons why A -> B. This means when I'm reading through the answer choices I can't quickly identify one because I can't clearly see which one actually does weaken the argument. When I'm strengthening an argument, the answer choice becomes evident right away because I see the gaps that need to be filled and only one answer does that. I'm not sure this helps explain my problem any better?

    @LSATcantwin Yeah that does make sense to me. In the beginning I had issues understanding how it was okay and not okay to weaken arguments on the LSAT. Can you give me a question from the test that you worked on where this was an issue? (if you can please include why/how you eliminated or selected the answer choices)

    Prep 34 Sec 3 Prob 18 ---- It's one of J.Y.'s examples from the CC.

  • nessa.k13.0nessa.k13.0 Inactive ⭐
    edited May 2017 4141 karma

    Thanks! @LSATcantwin can you walk through your reasoning? What do you think about each ac? What'd you identify as the conclusion and the premise(s)?

  • nessa.k13.0nessa.k13.0 Inactive ⭐
    4141 karma

    I can (I will later) tell you what I think but that wouldn't help get to the root of what you may not be seeing.

  • LSATcantwinLSATcantwin Alum Member Sage ⭐
    13286 karma

    @"nessa.k13.0" said:
    I can (I will later) tell you what I think but that wouldn't help get to the root of what you may not be seeing.

    Just getting off work and headed home. I'll break it down when I get the chance!!

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