[lacrosse]

Hi All,

To be good at LR, one has to be able to identify the premise(s) and the conclusion accurately. However, after doing some of the Flaw Drills on page 75 of The Trainer and reading the answers on page 77 I’ve realized that I am possibly confusing the two. Would you mind letting me know where my errors are?

 

Scenario Three, Drill #2 (p.75):

“Ironically, in our current general economic state, individuals need to spend more money in order for our general economy to improve. So, go out and spend, spend, spend! It’s good for our country.”

Premise 1: Individuals need to spend more money in order for our general economy to improve.

Premise 2: (Spending) is good for our country.

Conclusion: So, go out and spend, spend, spend!

 

Have I identified the premises and the conclusion correctly? The author wants us to “go out and spend” and gives two reasons for it: 1) for our general economy to improve; and 2) because it is good for our country.

Now I should look for the ways these two premises fail to support the stated conclusion.

The flaw is I see is that the author takes for granted that we want our general economy to improve (Premise #1). Perhaps I have shorted the stock market so I actually do not want the country’s economy to get better as that will conflict with my personal enrichment plan. Also the author takes for granted that we want to do what is good for our country (Premise #2). Perhaps I am an evildoer who desires the opposite.

Here is the solution to this Drill from page 77: “Takes for granted that what is good for our general economy is what is good for our country. Perhaps there are other, more significant considerations that determine what is good for our country”.

I know that when it comes to the LSAT, we should question not the truthfulness of the premises but whether or not these premises support the conclusion. If so, the solution on page 77 seems to indicate that “(Spending) is good for our country” is not a premise but is the conclusion. Shouldn’t the author’s call to action (“So, go out and spend!”) be regarded as the conclusion instead?

 

Scenario Four, Drill #6 (p. 75):

“Good intentions line the histories of many of our most environmentally harmful products. For example, plastic was invented, at least in part, to combat the wasting of wood and paper products. This proves that good intentions, coupled with limited foresight, can cause negative consequences for our environment.”

Premise 1: Good intentions line the histories of many of our most environmentally harmful products.

Premise 2: For example, plastic was invented, at least in part, to combat the wasting of wood and paper products.

Conclusion: This proves that good intentions, coupled with limited foresight, can cause negative consequences for our environment.

 

Does it seem that I’ve picked the premises and the conclusion accurately?

The first thing that jumps out at me is that nowhere in this argument is it explicitly stated that plastic is an environmentally harmful product. I have to wonder, is this omission an actual reasoning flaw or is that something that a test-taker should understand to be true? If it’s the latter, would the idea that “plastic is one of our most environmentally harmful products” simply be drawn from combining the first two of the argument’s sentences as opposed to being a commonsense assumption from “the real world”?

Is it a good idea to mentally join the first two sentences/premises together, or is that a dangerous technique to use? If we combine the two, the result will read “Plastic is one of our most environmentally harmful products that was invented, at least in part, with the good intention of combating the waste of wood and paper products.”

Here is the solution to this Drill from page 77: “Takes for granted that good intentions had a hand in causing these negative consequences. It could be that, even though these items were made with good intentions, what caused them to be harmful was just poor foresight or some other factor.”

I agree that good intentions did not directly create the negative consequences for the environment. However, if we accept all premises on the LSAT to be true, these good intentions (at least in part) caused the creation of something else (plastic) and that something else was bad for the environment. In other words, if A causes B and B causes C, can’t we say that A causes C?

Also, I’ve noticed that the argument is worded in terms that are less than absolute. For instance, “invented at least in part to…” is used instead of “invented solely to…” and “can cause negative consequences” is used instead of “will always cause negative consequences.” I know that this lower degree of certainty can undermine the criticism of the conclusion in the “Weaken” type of questions. But does it also make it more difficult to correctly solve the “Flaw in the Reasoning” questions or is this totally irrelevant here? The author/speaker seems to given himself a lot of wiggle room with the careful wording of this argument.

 

Thank you for your thoughts!

Alex

 

[Mike Kim]

Hi Alex,

This is Mike Kim — great questions —

Here are some thoughts I hope you find helpful — if you have any follow-up, just let me know.

“Ironically, in our current general economic state, individuals need to spend more money in order for our general economy to improve. So, go out and spend, spend, spend! It’s good for our country.”

I saw the conclusion as: Go out and spend, spend, spend! It’s good for our country.

With the premise being: Individuals need to spend more money in order for our general economy to improve.

Looking at the argument on those terms, you can see that the spending part is consistent and the part that differs between premise and conclusion is “economy..improve” and “good for our country.” And thus to me the primary error is the assumed connection between those two concepts.

One thing to keep in mind is that the rules of grammar are not absolute (as opposed to the rules of logic, which are absolute) — so, you could argue for reading various arguments in different ways (however, in my experience LSAC will never have a right/wrong answer issue hinge on any sort of questionable grammatical interpretation) —

In this case, an alternative way one could read this argument would be

Individuals need to spend more to improve economy → thus (intermediate conclusion, which also counts as premise for conclusion) spending is good for country → thus one ought to spend, spend, spend.

If you choose to see it this way, which is I think closer to how you saw it, the error can occur either between the premise and the intermediate conclusion, or the intermediate conclusion and the final conclusion.

And if you read it this way, than the flaw I mention would be one of two you see, with the other being that, as you said, taking for granted one ought to spend, spend, spend just because it’s good for the country (yes, u could definitely be evil, etc. 🙂 and I think it’s great you are already thinking of all those alternatives).

I’ll discuss all of this — intermediate conclusion, and so on, in much greater detail in future lessons.

So, short answer, I read the structure differently, and hence the different explanation of the flaw, but you could certainly argue for a different read of the argument, in which case the flaw I saw would be one of two, with what u saw being the other.

“Good intentions line the histories of many of our most environmentally harmful products. For example, plastic was invented, at least in part, to combat the wasting of wood and paper products. This proves that good intentions, coupled with limited foresight, can cause negative consequences for our environment.”

One thing that can be very helpful for focusing in on the flaw, or a view of the flaw, that will best match what the test writers will focus on is to start by thinking about what type of point the author is trying to make, then work backwards to see how he/she is trying to make it.

I realize that’ a bit of a “duh,” statement — what I mean is to do is emphasize the value of thinking of the conclusion first, then the premise(s), as opposed to premise(s), then conclusion (I’ll get into a lot more detail about exact reading strategies later in the book) —

Back to this argument — the conclusion is specifically about something having a causal impact. The fact that plastic was invented for a certain intention tells us nothing about actual cause and effect, and neither does the correlation that exists between good intentions and environmentally harmful products.

Causation is a unique reasoning issue onto itself, and the only thing that can actually prove causation is causation. This will also be discussed at length in later lessons (you can jump ahead to 112 for a sneak peek of some of it), but, for now — if you see a conclusion about causation and no premises that directly mention causation in any way, that’s going to be an issue with the reasoning, and that’s what’s going on here.

Hope I’ve addressed your concerns and that the above helps clear things up, and hope you are finding the Trainer useful — if you have any other q’s, happy to answer, so just let me know — Mike

[lacrosse]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for your response! This definitely helps and the first argument is much clearer to me now. However, the second drill still feels problematic to me.

Here is the part where I am having trouble: “The fact that plastic was invented for a certain intention tells us nothing about actual cause and effect”. Similarly, on p.77 you’ve written: “Takes for granted that good intentions had a hand in causing these negative consequences. It could be that, even though these items were made with good intentions…” From what I see in the premises of the argument, plastic wasn’t just invented with good intentions, it was invented because of good intentions, thus indicating causation!

Allow me to explain why I keep on seeing causation instead of simply correlation here.

The second sentence of the argument states: “plastic was invented, at least in part, to combat the wasting of wood and paper products”. To me this means that the unnamed inventor of plastic had a goal he wanted to accomplish: he wanted to combat the wasting of wood and paper products. And as the means of accomplishing this goal, he invented plastic.

The causation can be represented as:

Wanting to combat the wasting of wood and paper products (Cause) → Invention of plastic (Effect).

But why did the inventor care if wood and paper products were being wasted in the first place?

The second sentence starts with the words “For example”, indicating that the Cause → Effect relationship in the second sentence is in fact an example of what’s being described in the first sentence. The first sentence is “Good intentions line the histories of many of our most environmentally harmful products.” Therefore, the desire to “combat the wasting of wood and paper products” is an example of the plastic inventor’s good intentions and plastic itself is an example of one of the most environmentally harmful products. Now we know at least one reason why the inventor set out to create plastic – it is because he had good intentions. The connecting phrase “For example, …” within the two premises (and one is not supposed to cast doubt on what the LSAT premises say) indicates that the “good intentions” were not just some unrelated state of mind for the inventor but were in fact one of the driving factors behind his decision to do something about the problem that he saw taking place.

Putting this all together, we have:

Having good intentions (Cause) → Wanting to combat the wasting of wood and paper products (Intermediate Effect, which also acts as Cause for the subsequent Effect) → Invention of plastic (Effect).

Am I really confused? Or is this another case of grammar rules not being absolute and allowing different interpretations of the same argument?

This drill actually reminded me of Question #22 from PT 66, S 4. I am not sure if you are a fan of PowerScore but their Logical Reasoning Bible discusses it in depth on p.262-265 of Chapter 8. They call it an advanced causal chain problem because (according to the conclusion) the altruism of a meerkat sentinel causes the sentinel to engage in watchful behavior, which in turn (as the premises state) causes other meerkats to become aware of danger by hearing the sentinel’s loud bark. Isn’t the sentinel’s altruism in that causal problem very much analogous to the good intentions of the inventor of plastic in this problem? Or am I seeing similarities which are not really there?

 

Thank you for reading this! I know it’s a rather wordy question.

–Alex

[Mike Kim]

Hey Alex —

I think I understand what you are saying and appreciate your careful efforts —

I think the point at issue is the following —

Having a causal impact on the creation of something is not the same as having a causal impact on that thing having a negative impact on the environment.

Those two things are certainly correlated, but it’s very difficult to prove that one thing actually has a causal impact on another — per all we know, plastic didn’t have to end up being harmful, and per what we know, there is no information that tells us intentions had a direct role in causing plastic to be harmful.

I hope that clears it up, and if you have any more follow up don’t hesitate to let me know — MK

[lacrosse]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for explaining this to me!

I do have a much more general test preparation strategy question for you.

When studying for LSAT I am quite concerned about leaving no stone unturned.  When I encounter a problem or a concept I just don’t get, I tend to spend hours and hours thinking about it and trying to understand the issue. I fear that moving on without achieving that complete comprehension will backfire on me by making it even harder to understand other related LSAT concepts or doom me to repeating the same mistake over and over again.

What’s your advice to your students who tend to get “stuck” on a regular basis while studying up for LSAT? Should one keep on reading further with the expectation that understanding other parts of LSAT helps in making sense of the parts that are problematic right now? Is there a finite amount of time one should spend on an issue, leave it alone and come back to it a day/three days/a week later to try to make sense of it again? What’s a good rule of thumb?

–Alex

 

[Mike Kim]

Hi Alex —

Great q — I feel like I could write 1000 pages of thoughts on the subject, but, at the same time, I’m having a tough time trying to figure out what would be most useful/helpful for you to hear — I’ll do my best to keep my thoughts as specifically related to the LSAT as possible —

Some premises to begin —

1) At it’s core, the LSAT is structured around issues that are simple and fundamental. As I mention often in the Trainer, this is by design — the LSAT is not supposed to require of the test taker or reward any unique or advanced skills or knowledge.

The fact that these concepts at issue are meant to be simple and fundamental does not mean it will/should always be easy to understand them clearly and correctly.

2) The big challenge in the hardest q’s comes not from any one particular skill required of you — but rather from having to bring various combinations of skills together, in situations that are just a bit more rushed, messy, and uncomfortable than you’d like —

It’s like trying to juggle balls of different weights while riding a skateboard along a curvy road —

With the big difference being that for a tough LSAT q, it’s much more difficult to define, exactly, what the various challenges being combined actually are.

Suggestions —

1) When you are studying the very specific issues that define the LSAT — the building blocks of problems (a single argument, a single inference, a conditional statement, etc.) — your goal and expectation should be to understand them as completely as possible, and I want to very much encourage you to push yourself on this as much as possible and whenever possible.

A small caveat here is that you do have to be careful of going down certain rabbit holes that are not relevant to the LSAT — for example, with the causality stuff we discussed earlier — causality is something you can study for practically forever because it’s a fascinating subject that can be considered from a variety of angles — however, the LSAT only requires of you a very, very small part of this complete bandwidth of knowledge, and, for the purposes of studying for the LSAT at least, you want to be careful not to go off onto tangential topics.

2) When you have trouble with combining these individual skills — for example, if you have trouble with an entire LR problem or an entire Logic Game — your expectations should be a bit different — there are some additional concerns to consider here — namely that a) your brain needs to figure out which skills it’s supposed to bring together for any particular situation and b) your brain needs to get better and better at bringing these skills together.

Your brain has to overcome some serious impediments in trying to satisfy these goals —

— For one, it hasn’t yet been exposed to everything it’s supposed to know about the LSAT — so, essentially, it doesn’t even have, yet, the full list of skills from which it’s supposed to choose and use —

— And two, it needs practice in order to get good at combining these skills in the way the test requires —

Imagine your brain as a dense, dark forest, and when you combine different skills together, you are creating a walking path between them — before you get much experience at LSAT problems, this path is virtually non-existent and your brain will have a very difficult time seeing what it’s supposed to do/think about — as you get more and more experience, hopefully you end up leaving clearer and clearer walking paths in between these various skills, and this will, in turn make it much easier for brain to see what it is supposed to do / what it’s supposed to bring together for any one particular situation, and in what manner/order —

So, when you run into an LR q that seems impossible or an LG game you could never imagine being able to solve well on test day early on in your prep– you want to be more patient with yourself, and, as opposed to the individual skill issues I mentioned above, it’s more okay to let go and come back — in a few days or a couple of weeks, perhaps you will have learned something that fills in the gaps for you, or you will have practiced related problems/games that then give your brain a better sense of how to attack these ones, and so on —

3) The last thought/suggestion I have is something super-obvious but still so important to me that I’d feel guilty if I didn’t mention it — a huge part of success, especially when it comes to something like the LSAT, is actually knowing what you know — and trying to know as deeply, honestly, simply, and correctly as you possibly can —

Here are two math situations:

5+2 = 7

20 times 25 = 500

For both, I imagine everyone reading can understand the answer and understand how to get there, but for most of us (me at least) the effort required to get to the answer is different — the 7 just comes to me and the 500 takes a bit of work.

Again, as I mentioned above, high-level LSAT success requires you to bring together a combination of skills, and to do so well in a highly pressurized situation — in order to be able to do so, you have to be able to trust in yourself and be your own authority, and you want to actively work toward that goal as much as possible in your prep —

It seems to be in your nature, Alex, to push to want to truly know what you know — and so you probably don’t need me to say any of this last part — still, again, I mention it here because it’s something that I believe is very important, and I want to encourage you to keep with that instinct to push and push and push to know better and better and better.

And any time I can help, please don’t hesitate to reach out, and I’ll try to be of use as best I can —

Mike

[lacrosse]

Hi Mike,

This is really good advice, thank you! I have to admit my tendency to fall down into that out-of-scope “rabbit hole”. For now, the line between thoughts guiding one to the true understanding of what LSAT requires and the thoughts that lead one to what LSAT is uninterested in seems a little blurry to me. I think that as I keep on reading your book I’ll be able to train myself to feel this line better.

I totally hear you when you say that LSAT is tough not because it requires knowledge of rocket science but because it requires knowing which one(s) of the several simple skills to use + when to use them + how to use them for maximum effect, all while the clock is ticking. I’ll keep on doing the drills and wait for my persistence to pay off!

— Alex