There’s a method of reasoning to our madness this week, as Branden & Jelena take you through a step-by-step prescription for improving your performance on Methods of Reasoning and Argument Structure questions.
These may not be the flashiest questions on the LSAT, but they’re a consistent source of points if you approach them with the right strategy.
Listen and learn . . .
Listen and learn . . .
- How to identify the most common argumentative techniques on the LSAT
- Why arguments don’t have to be flawless—or even good—to appear in the stimulus for these LR question types
- The difference between premises and background information
- How to tell a main conclusion from a subsidiary
- When it’s okay to appeal to authority (even though “appeal to authority” is also a fallacy)
- How to handle two-perspective questions
- Why the main conclusion is often “the other guy is wrong!”
Branden:
There's a method to my madness, Jelena.
Jelena:
All right, method man. I'll bite. What's the method and where's the madness?
Branden:
I was anticipating the method question, but not the madness part. Let's see. Well, I financed law school pretty much entirely with loans. In hindsight, that seems pretty crazy.
Jelena:
True, but I don't think taking out student loans shows up in any addition of the DSM yet.
Branden:
Discount shoe market?
Jelena:
The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. DSM for short. Dude, there's no such thing as loan repayment dysphoria or anything like that. In other words, your self-proclaimed madness is more just questionable judgment, which we've all experienced from time to time.
Branden:
Okay. Well, I used to dip my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in ketchup when I was a kid.
Jelena:
Ugh. Okay, well that's just gross, but again, not madness. Maybe we should just move on to the method part.
Branden:
Yeah. That's what today's episode is about. Well, partially anyway. Methods of reasoning questions. And when I said there's a method to my madness, I was going to talk about how with each logical reasoning question, I determined whether it's an argument or a set of facts. If it's an argument, find the conclusion, separate premises from background, the usual.
Jelena:
Well, that sounds perfectly logical. So again, where's the madness?
Branden:
You, much like the makers of the LSAT, take things too literally. It sounds cool to say there's a method to my madness. Just like someday, I want to run into a newspaper printing press and shout, "Stop the presses."
Jelena:
Do they even have those anymore?
Branden:
I don't know, but podcasts have intros so I can certainly shout, "Roll intro."
Jelena:
Welcome to The Legal Level, a podcast from TestMax, the creators of LSAT Max and BarMax. I'm Jelena.
Branden:
And I'm Brandon. We're your companions on the road to the legal field, whether you've just started thinking about law school or you've already passed the bar.
Max Fischer (Rushmore):
What? Are you a lawyer?
Jelena:
The Legal Level is available from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever you're listening to it right now.
Branden:
If you like today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and tell a friend.
Jelena:
After you're done listening, if you still have questions about today's topic, you can talk about it with a 99th percentile LSAT instructor by texting L-S-A-T to 310-818-7743. Or if you'd like your question to be on the show, just email podcast@testmaxprep.com, and we might answer you on the air.
Jelena:
On today's episode, we're talking about two logical reasoning question types, methods of reasoning and argument structure questions. These questions are related, and they also are not heavily tested. So it makes sense to pack them both into one episode.
Branden:
Yes, you'll probably see one of each of these question types in a logical reasoning section. You might see two, but probably not more than that. That's because these questions aren't asking you to make inferences or to critique an argument, which is mostly what logical reasoning does. Instead, they're merely asking you to analyze an argument and report back about what you find.
Jelena:
Argument structure questions are more narrowly focused than methods of reasoning questions asking about just one statement in the stimulus. So let's start off with them. Brandon, what is an argument structure question asking for and how do you know when you're dealing with one?
Branden:
Well, to take the second part first, I think it's usually pretty easy to know how you're dealing with one, because they're the only question type that will literally rip a piece of the stimulus out and repeat it in the prompt. So they'll ask something like, how does the claim that dolphins only have one dorsal thin figure in the argument? Or what is its role in the argument?
Branden:
And so what they're doing is they are repeating a piece of the argument and then asking you, what is it doing? So they're not asking you about the argument entirely. They're asking you about a small piece of it. These are, as you might guess, always arguments because you can't ask about how something figures into an argument, obviously, unless it is an argument.
Branden:
So I have a, I guess I would say pretty detailed analysis that I do with these questions, but let me ask you to start off, Jelena. How do you approach these questions or what do you look for in the stimulus anyway?
Jelena:
What do I look for in the stimulus? Well, there's really, basically just four types of things that can be in a stimulus when we are dealing with an argument question and these in fact are always arguments. In other words, they must have at least one premise and they must have at least one conclusion, but they can also have background information or context. So something like, "Most scientists agree that global warming is caused by humans, or homelessness is a serious social problem."
Jelena:
That kind of statement doesn't always actually figure into the argument while it could, if we said, "Homelessness is a serious social problem." And then the next statement was, "Anything that is a serious social problem should be addressed with taxpayer funds," then that would be a part of the argument, but if it's simply, "Homelessness is a serious social problem," and then we go into something much more specific about homelessness like, "The Governor has proposed a new spending plan to address homelessness by building tiny home villages and these are the arguments for it, here's a conclusion," then that, "Homelessness is a serious social problem," is just basically setting the playing field for the argument. It's neither a premise nor a conclusion.
Jelena:
A premise is something that gives direct support to at least one conclusion, and a conclusion is something that receives support from at least one premise. Now, in these stimuli, stimuluses for argument structure questions, I'm never quite sure what the appropriate for the LSAP plural of stimuluses, there can be two types of conclusions.
Branden:
I think it's stemies.
Jelena:
The stemies. Ooh, that sounds inappropriate, Brandon.
Branden:
Well, this is a podcast for adults.
Jelena:
Yeah. If they, if there are . . .
Branden:
At least people who are in college, who should be adults.
Jelena:
If there are very many children listening to our podcasts, then kudos to those children who are already studying for the LSAT. You are much more mature than I was at your age, and ignore our inappropriate behavior. Two types of conclusion.
Two types of conclusions, neither of them relates to children. Main conclusion, what the author basically wants you to believe after hearing their argument, and a subsidiary or intermediate conclusion, which is a conclusion that gets support from at least one premise and gives support to at least one other conclusion. So if you think of, I like to draw out an argument as a pyramid and the very tip of the pyramid is the main conclusion. That's that little, top super pointy part. It's getting support from everything else and it's giving support to nothing.
Jelena:
So the best way to identify if you have a basic understanding of how to tell whether or not a statement supports another statement, the best way to differentiate the main conclusion from the subsidiary conclusion is that the main conclusion is selfish. It does not give support to any of the other conclusions or premises, or anything else. Premises do not receive support. Premises are on the bottom of the pyramid. They do not get support. They simply give support to everything else in the argument.
Jelena:
And then your subsidiary conclusions are the middle of the pyramid, where they receive support and give support. So look for that selfish conclusion, mark that, and then examine how the premises and any subsidiary conclusions support it, then figure out what you are actually supposed to be identifying. So that thing, the role statement that you are looking for, how does it figure in the argument? They're going to give you a specific portion of the stimulus to look for its role or how it plays into the argument.
Jelena:
Once you have analyzed and understood the whole argument, then you should be able to easily anticipate the correct answer. So Brandon, you want to tell us about finding the correct answer for an argument structure question once you have analyzed the argument?
Branden:
I do. So what they really love to do with these and with any question type, and these are some of the most common question types, but with any question type, and this includes flaw questions. So those are the most common question types, but questions that are asking you to describe the stimulus are very often the wrong answer, is just either saying something false about the stimulus, or it's saying something that does not show up in the stimulus. And so when they're asking you to accurately characterize what is in the stimulus, they very often lie. So an answer choice will lie. I call them liar answer choices.
Branden:
It's often very hard to see that they're lying because the stimulus is in this kind of stilted, difficult to read language and the makers of the LSAT, I call them the masters of the synonym because they never just... well, they very rarely just rip out statements from the stimulus and put them into answer choices. Instead, they'll refer to them in synonymous ways. And one of the arts of the LSAT is to understand when something is synonymous or when something is slightly different.
Branden:
When it comes to these different statement types though, we talked about how really there are four of them, I think they deal with them differently and you have to, I think be very careful. With subsidiary and intermediate conclusions, they very often will give you conclusion language before one of those statements and then not give you that conclusion language in front of the main conclusion. So you'll see a bunch of statements. One of them starts with therefore, and they ask you about that statement. You're like, "Aha, that's the conclusion."
Branden:
Well, you know when it says therefore or thus, or hence, it's a conclusion. That may or may not mean that it is the main conclusion of the argument. One of the things to do is sometimes if I'm unsure whether or not I'm looking at the main conclusion or a subsidiary conclusion, I'll take that statement and just look at it side by side with the other statement that I think might be the main conclusion and ask myself, which one could reasonably support the other? If the statement that you are being asked about could reasonably support another statement in the stimulus, you're dealing with the subsidiary conclusion rather than the main conclusion.
Branden:
I've given my identifying conclusion speech on this podcast several times now, but it's so very important that I'll just give it again because in this context, like I said, they very often ask you about subsidiary conclusions and the trap answer is that it is the main conclusion of the argument. So main conclusions are very often things like the disputation of a point of view, saying somebody else is wrong. They're very often a prescription that we should or ought to do something. When you were talking about homelessness as a serious social problem. If we went on to talk about what should be done about it, that would likely be the main conclusion of the argument. Hypotheses, an explanation of a phenomenon is very often the main conclusion of the argument.
Branden:
So if you see one of those statements, but it doesn't start with therefore... oh, I forgot. There's also predictions. There are also opinions. Those things are often the main conclusion of an argument. So if you see things in a stimulus like that, but they don't say therefore in front of them, it's very, very likely that that statement is the main conclusion and the one that says therefore is a subsidiary conclusion.
Branden:
So the analysis, this is all a very long way of getting to this analysis, the right answer choice generally does two things. It correctly identifies the role as background, a statement that does not provide support and is not supported, as a premise, a statement that provides support but is not supported, as a subsidiary conclusion, a statement that both provides support and is supported or the main conclusion, which is only supported. So it will collect correctly, identify the role, but it will also correctly identify how it interacts with other statements.
Branden:
So a lot of times with these questions, you'll see three answers, they call it a premise. And the statement they're asking about is a premise, but only one of them actually correctly identifies the statement for which it provides support. So if you are doing those two things, what type of statement is this? And how does it interact with other statements? You should hopefully be able to come up with the right answer.
Branden:
So we've talked about it a couple of times, but that, "Homelessness is a serious social problem," is actually from... I think it's prep test three. It's a very old prep test, but this is a problem that I've gone through with many students. And it's just mystifying because the stimulus starts out and it says, "Homelessness is a serious social problem," and then it goes on to conclude what causes homelessness. And then they ask you, "How does that statement figure in the stimulus?" And the right answer choice says something like, "It is compatible with either accepting the conclusion or denying it."
Branden:
And nobody picks that answer because they're like, "What? That's not the role. That means it's not doing anything." And to the makers of the LSAT, yes, it is not doing anything. The point of background is to orient you in the argument, but it is not actually part of the argument. The last thing I'll say about this, I know we're not talking about parallel questions, but I think this reveals what the makers of the LSAT are doing. A lot of times on a parallel question, they will give you an argument in the stimulus with some background. The right answer choice will not have background, but it's still the right answer because the makers of the LSAT don't consider background to be part of the argument. They consider it to be like the packaging the argument comes in.
Branden:
So that I think is about my approach to these questions. I know we're going to get into methods of reasoning questions in a little bit, but I guess I'll just ask you, Jelena, before we take off here. Any other advice for choosing right answer, getting rid of wrong answers, or have I covered it completely?
Jelena:
I would just add one thing, which is another beware of trap, and the beware of trap is that if you are lost in the sauce on one of these questions and you really don't know what the part of the argument that you are looking to identify means, you will be very susceptible to one of LSAT's favorite tricks with these, which is to make some of the wrong answers sound very abstract and LSATy, which will lead students who are confused to just pick the one that just sounds like something that would be right on the LSAT like, "It denies the truth of the first premise without denying the conclusion, or it is an intermediary conclusion supported by a single premise." And no matter how LSATy something sounds, if it does not actually describe the argument and the role in the argument of the statement that you are looking for, it can't be the correct answer.
Jelena:
So one little trick that I have for people who tend to pick those very abstract trap answers is unabstract them. If it says something like, "It denies the first premise or denies the premise of the argument," rephrase that in your head. So if a premise of the argument is, "Additional spending will not resolve the homelessness problem on our streets," then say the answer choice like rather than it denies the first premise, it denies that additional spending is unable to solve the homelessness problem on our streets. If it accepts the truth of the conclusion, if the conclusion is the fundamental thing we need is more housing, then it denies that fundamentally we need more housing.
Jelena:
And if that doesn't accurately describe the argument when you take those abstract terms out and replace them with the actual parts of the argument and rephrase it, then it can't possibly be the correct answer. That is a slow technique. Some people are hesitant to actually try it on these questions because it does take time to do that paraphrase, but you're not going to need to do it forever. I don't think I've ever had a student who I taught that technique to who still had to do it on every one of these questions by the time that they took their official LSAT.
Jelena:
It's just a little way to stop yourself from rushing to the trap answer. It's just a little interruption to be like, "Wait, before I choose that, let me double-check it." So give that a try. And with that, I think I've said all I have to say about argument structure questions. So let us talk methods of reasoning. You want to introduce us to the method of reasoning questions, Brandon?
Branden:
Sure. So method of reasoning questions are asking you a very broad question, but they come kind of in two forms. And I have noticed that the makers of the LSAT take their prompts very literally. We were talking about this a few weeks ago with must be true questions. They can change the prompt a little bit and yes, it's a must be true question, but they might be asking you about a principle or something like that. So there are some variations.
Branden:
Well, some of these will ask you something that sounds pretty specific. They'll ask you something like, "What is the method of reasoning or what is the author's strategy of argumentation?" And what those I think are asking you is how do the premises support the conclusion? If there's more than premises, if there's a subsidiary conclusion, then obviously that's a little bit of a missed description of how the argument is working. It might be a little more complicated than that, but basically what they're asking you is how does the support, support the conclusion?
Branden:
Then sometimes they will just ask you the broadest question possible. They'll say something like, "The argument does which one of the following?" And they give themselves a whole lot of leeway with that question, because there are lots of things that fall outside of the strategy of argumentation that could reasonably be said to be something that the argument does. So with those questions, I try to obviously analyze the argument and understand it, but I also understand that the makers of the LSAT are giving themselves room to provide an answer choice that is right, as long as it is true in all respects about the stimulus.
Branden:
And so sometimes the answer choice will look a little weird to one of those, but you have to recognize that when the makers of the LSAT ask, "What is the method of reasoning?" When they ask, "The argument does which one of the following?" Those are in some senses, the same question, but I would say that method of reasoning or strategy of argumentation idea falls under the broader idea of, "What the heck is this argument doing?" So that's how you identify them.
Branden:
One of the best ways to prepare for these is to understand that the makers of the LSAT aren't creative in that they give the same arguments over and over again, or the same types of arguments, or at least the same structure of arguments, even though they're changing subject matter. And those argument structures aren't even things that they came up to begin with. They're things that I learned in my philosophy class that Plato and Aristotle were yaking about 3,000 years ago, or however long ago it was that they lived.
Branden:
So knowing those common argument forms, if you see one pop up, you have done what the makers of the LSAT care about. You understand what the argument is doing and the right answer sometimes just spits back the name of that common argument form right at you. Sometimes you're not going to get one of those common argument forms. It's just going to be a bunch of statements that support another statement, and you can't really pack it into those argument forms. But I do think that knowing those argument forms, and we will give you our listeners, some examples of those argument forms in a little bit, knowing those argument forms is really helpful.
Branden:
We've talked in the past about how knowing flaws is really helpful. I look at methods of reasoning questions as kind of the light side of the force to flaw questions, dark side. They're both asking you how do the premises relate to the conclusion? But these questions are just asking you about arguments that do a fairly good job of supporting their conclusion. The flaw questions are asking you, "Why does this...?" Or the errors in reasoning questions are asking you, "Why do these premises not actually provide good support for the conclusion?"
Branden:
So that is the basic idea of what they're asking. So why don't we just jump into a couple of these common argument forms? I have some examples that I often use with students. So I will give you those examples as we go through. A great way to break these down is that some of them are often just one point of view arguments, which is where the author is just expressing their own point of view. They're not necessarily disputing someone else's point of view, but then there are two point of view arguments, and there are argument structures that go along with those two point of view arguments, that are designed to undermine someone else's argument.
Branden:
Sometimes there are two speakers, although my understanding is that they've been doing that less on the LSAT than they did before, but you will still often see two points of view when there's just one speaker in the stimulus, because the speaker will say something like, "Some people think that all geese are noisy, but they're wrong." And so when you're talking about what other people believe, you're announcing their point of view and then you are attacking it. So that is a two point of view argument and understanding that there are particular ways to say all those types of arguments is helpful.
Branden:
So we're going to start off with these one point of view arguments. And the one that you learn very early on in your studies for the LSAT is applying a principle. So we know about conditional statements, if, then statements. So an argument might look something like this. "If someone parks their car in a tow way zone, their car will be towed. John just parked his car in a tow way zone. Therefore John's car is going to be towed away."
Branden:
And what I do is I take a principle. "If you park in a tow away zone, you're going to get towed." And then I give you a fact that triggers that principle. I give you the sufficient condition of that principle. You can conclude the necessary. This is very common. If you see something like it and they ask you, "What is the method of reasoning?" It's very likely that they'll say something like, "The author is applying a principle or the author is applying rules to a certain factual situation." The answers are very abstract in that they're talking about the structure of the argument generally and not really the subject matter.
Branden:
So that is applying a principal. The relevant authority on the LSAT here is definitely Jelena, so I will let her give you the next argument form, which is an appeal to a relevant authority.
Jelena:
Yeah, well, applying a principal, very important. That's how my elementary school always handled my behavior. They simply applied the principal.
Branden:
Yak, yak, yak.
Jelena:
Who was in fact . . .
Branden:
Spelling counts.
Jelena:
Who was in fact, a relevant authority. A relevant authority to my child misbehavior.
Branden:
I think that's mixing argument forms. I don't know if you're supposed to do that.
Jelena:
And we're not supposed to cross the streams from what I hear.
Branden:
Yes.
Jelena:
So I shall transition into appeal to a relevant authority. This is basically like the photo negative of the appeal to authority fallacy. We all know that if you are going to make the argument that split's say, "Guava cures cancer," you probably shouldn't just appeal to your next door neighbor who insists that she had stage four liver cancer. And instead of doing chemo, she just ate guava and she's totally fine now. That's anecdotal. She's not an expert, that wasn't a controlled environment. You have no idea if she's telling the truth, but you could appeal to a proper authority, like say the Mayo Clinic.
Jelena:
If you were talking about a health issue, or if you are talking about a scientific issue, appeal to a leading scientist, appeal to a specific study, a report that has been released that is authored by a consortium of experts in the field. Anytime you're appealing to an authority that actually does have some kind of objective credentials to say that they are an expert on the matter. You are appealing to a relevant authority.
Jelena:
Now, I think it's important to kind of take this opportunity to note that just because you are being asked for a valid argument form does not mean that the arguments that will be found in the stimulus for a method of reasoning question are unassailable. They are in fact flawed, just like every single argument on the LSAT, except like maybe the occasional very basic transit of arguments.
Jelena:
Everything can be attacked. There are no perfect arguments, really in the world. And there certainly are very few perfect arguments on the LSAT because they are intentionally written to be fairly bad, to prepare you for analyzing fairly bad arguments in law school. So don't get tripped up by feeling like, "Wait, but I could actually dispute that because who's to say that just because the Mayo Clinic believes that this is true, that there isn't another equally important health authority somewhere that believes this is false? Maybe the head of the CDC disagrees with the Mayo Clinic."
Jelena:
So don't start feeling like you can't choose something as a method of reasoning answer just because there is still a flaw you can see in the argument, or you can see a way to dispute the argument. You're just trying to describe it. It's not on you to prove it. This isn't a strengthened with sufficient premise question. With that in mind, let's talk about what these are like? In other words, likening things to other things through argument by analogy. You want to give us that one, Brandon?
Branden:
Yeah. So this is a very common argument form on the LSAT, and I think it's very important in that when you go to law school, much of what you do is analogical reasoning. So an analogy is just saying something is like something else. And that's kind of at the core of what lawyers do, at least when they're arguing motions, often in court, or sometimes you write briefs and argue the same thing, but what you're doing is saying, "Hey, look, there's a case in which the judge found for the plaintiff in, I don't know, 30 years ago."
Branden:
Well, the facts of this case are very similar. And so you should find for the plaintiff, which is my client in this case. That's what you say to the judge. That's less what you say to the jury because juries don't really deal with matters of law, but it's a very important thing to do and parallel questions, I know I keep coming back to them in this episode, parallel questions are asking you to understand when things are analogous. I am kind of surprised that they're not more common, because like I said, analogy is at the heart of what lawyers do.
Branden:
So like you were saying, arguments are often not valid argument forms. And I don't think any... like you said, an appeal to a relevant authority. I think it's impossible really for that to be a wholly valid argument form where the premises, if true would guarantee the truth of the conclusion, experts can be wrong. Argument by analogy generally is also not a valid argument form. So I'll give you one that people will probably find invalid or at least questionable, but something like, "Hey, I've got my kitty, she's a fur baby. She's pretty easy to take care of." Kids are just babies without the fur. So kids are probably easy to take care of as well.
Jelena:
Now, as a single father, is that accurate, Brandon?
Branden:
It is incredibly inaccurate, but children are a joy, much more than pets are a joy. And I don't even think my daughter listens to this podcast so I could lie about that. But what is it they say? I think it's 1% joy, 99% perspiration. I don't know something like that. In any case, the idea behind an argument by analogy or often an argument by comparison is to compare two things in the premises. Sometimes it's more than comparing two things. These arguments can get complicated, but usually you're comparing these two things in one way, and then you are making a conclusion that they're similar in another way.
Branden:
So if you ever see them giving you an analogy, sometimes the analogy will make no sense. But if you understand that they are making an analogy, then find the answer choice that says something about an analogy. Those are fairly common. The next one is one that actually can be a valid argument form if you do it correctly. So some people call it eliminating alternatives. Some people call it rejecting alternatives. This is our last one point of view argument. So do you have an example for that one?
Jelena:
Rejecting alternatives, also something that played a role in my elementary school career when I was admitted at the last minute into a gifted and talented school, but rejected that alternative because my best friend didn't want to go with me. And also, because let's be honest, I was insulted that I had to get in off the wait list. I was five years old, but I still felt that I deserved better. Good choice.
Branden:
Wait lists are insulting. You hear that UCLA School of Law?
Jelena:
We've both experienced this trauma, but at different stages of life. On the LSAT, however, eliminating alternatives is sort of the mirror photo negative version of what we do to weaken a causal argument. We might come up with an alternative explanation for the causal effect that has been observed in order to weaken, whereas to strengthen again, we might eliminate alternatives. So you're describing essentially an argument that functions the way a correct strength and answer for a causal argument might. I'll give you an example.
Jelena:
Let's say there's... this is an interesting real study I read recently. There's some new evidence that not only sun exposure, but actually sun damage correlates with reduced mortality, kind of across the board, across a number of countries, a number of different types of people. Maybe we should be wearing less sunscreen, but it's a little early to say that. So if we wanted to kind of dig into that argument by eliminating alternatives, we would need to say something like a correlation between sun damage to the skin and lower mortality has been observed. This cannot adequately be explained by differences in behavior, such as increased fitness in people who are outside more often. This also cannot adequately be explained by access to healthcare in countries where people have more sun damage to their skin. Therefore, we are forced to believe that there is likely a causal link between sun damage and reduced mortality.
Jelena:
Now, in the real world, this correlation is nowhere near that level of certainty that there's anything causal about it, needs much more research. Don't get rid of your sunscreen because you heard this on a podcast, but it's interesting. Do you Google it if you're curious? However, that would be how you eliminate alternatives in order to strengthen a conclusion. Same thing with strength and questions on method of reasoning questions. You just have to accurately identify that the argument eliminates alternative possible explanations for the correlative or causative phenomena identified in the conclusion.
Jelena:
But what about when we get into two points of view, whether we have two speakers or simply one speaker who is disputing an individual invisible others point of view, or an establishment point of view? They might actually want to do the opposite and provide an alternative. How might they do that, Brandon?
Branden:
A very common two point of view argument form comes when somebody is explaining a phenomenon. So often you'll call this a hypothesis, but there will be some weird thing. And the weird thing is the background, the context that the makers of the LSAT give you. And then someone proposes an explanation which is probably kind of questionable. If you can provide a better explanation than the one that you got, then that's a good way of rejecting that explanation. This is actually the implementation of something known as Occam's razor.
Branden:
If you took philosophy classes, you would've heard of occam's razor, and occam's razor is a principle that allows you to come to a decision. And what it says is just when you are presented with two possible explanations of a phenomenon, the simpler one is the better one. So let me give you an example of somebody giving a bad explanation and then using occam's razor to attack that explanation.
Branden:
So let's say my friend runs up to me and says, "Brandon, my car was parked in the parking lot across the street from my house last night. I get up this morning. I go over to get in my car, to go to work, my car is gone. Well, that can only mean that my car is a transformer and it got up and ran away to go fight the Decepticons." And the way that I would respond to that first point of view, which I think is insane, would be, "You know what? I think a better explanation is probably just that your car got stolen. That is a simpler explanation, obviously than that your car is an alien life form that transforms and fights other things."
Branden:
And so between those two explanations, the better one is that the car was stolen. On the LSAT, they'll pack that into a little bit tighter of a situation and probably one that is less ridiculous, but you should. The makers of the LSAT very often pull ridiculous things out and I think sometimes they do it not necessarily to shock you, but to throw you off. But to understand that you could replace those two things or those things, a phenomenon, one explanation of it, and a better explanation of it with a bunch of different things.
Branden:
Sometimes it will be an explanation of, I don't know, why humans have a certain evolutionary feature, or why the earth goes around the sun, but that is providing an alternative explanation. And it is always used to knock down someone else's explanation because these are two point of view argument forms.
Branden:
The next one is a good one and something that you probably do on a fairly regular basis without noticing it. It's undermining an assumption.
Jelena:
First of all, I think your hypothetical French car was probably towed because you didn't say anything about your hypothetical friend having read all signage in the parking lot and determined that they were allowed to park overnight in that parking lot before parking. And we both live in the LA Metro area. So I'm going to go ahead and say, your French car got towed, not stolen. They might want to call the parking department and figure out where it is.
Branden:
So that's an alternative to my alternative explanation.
Jelena:
It is. It is. And I think that if we shave your explanation with occam's razor, I think we will find that mine is in fact, the most likely.
Branden:
Yeah, but we're going to get razor burn doing it.
Jelena:
We might, we might. We get razor burn from occam's razor. I feel like that could be like a college like freshman punk band's name, occam's razor burn.
Branden:
Ooh.
Jelena:
I would go to that show. My like 22 year old self would definitely go to the occam's razor burn show. All right. Let's talk undermining an assumption. By undermining... Look, assumptions, unless they have been explicitly proven, are generally a weakness in the argument. And if they've been explicitly proven, then they're not really an assumption. They're just background information or a fact. Or in fact, if they've been stated, a premise.
Jelena:
So assumptions to undermine them, most of the time, all you really need to do is point them out. So let's say we've got an argument from a Mayoral candidate, and that candidate is saying, "My opponent is telling you that she is the best choice for public safety in our city because her platform proposes hiring the most additional police officers, but what my opponent isn't telling you is that there is no reason to actually believe that simply hiring additional police officers will reduce the rate of crime in our city In fact, last year we hired 20% more police officers, and there was just as much crime as the year before.
Jelena:
So that would be undermining the assumption, the opponent's assumption that you can immediately translate simply hiring more police officers with nothing said about training, what kind of hiring requirements they would have into increased public safety? And all the opponent really has to do is point out that something unproven is being assumed in order to weaken the opponent's conclusion.
Jelena:
So then the opponent, if this were in fact, a true back and forth, would have to then go back and defend their assumption that has been pulled out and undermined. One way they might defend that assumption is one of the more absurd argument forms, reductio ad absurdum, or reduction to the absurd. Do you want to reduce this podcast to the absurd for us, Brandon?
Branden:
I think we did that starting within 30 seconds of episode one, but sure.
Jelena:
Fair.
Branden:
I'll bring it down further.
Jelena:
Fair, fair.
Branden:
No. So this is a very uncommon argument form because it's really weird and it's actually hard to find situations that this argument form would work on. The example that I give to my students is this. It's a weird example, but I've never encountered a reduction to the absurd argument that wasn't a weird example. So what you are doing, structurally speaking with a reduction to the absurd argument is you're taking your opponent's line of reasoning and showing that it's going to lead to a ridiculous conclusion or an absurd conclusion. They often will say something like an undesirable conclusion in the answer choice when they're giving you one of these argument forms, and it looks something like this.
Branden:
So here's the example I give. Some people say that the slower you drive, the safer you'll be. Well, if I take that line of reasoning to its logical end, the slowest you could drive would be, I don't know, a quarter mile of an hour or maybe even less. And if everybody drove as slow as possible, they would actually never get to their destination and die of thirst in their car.
Branden:
And so your claim that the slower you drive, the safer you will be is false. That's a weird argument. You have to get to the point where people of dying of thirst in their cars that are going a quarter mile of an hour to get there. It does not show up a lot on the LSAT, but when you see something like that, somebody taking the line of reasoning, "Here's what you said, and it's going to lead you to this weird, bad place, you are dealing with a reduction to the absurd argument.
Branden:
Again, they're unlikely to use the word absurd, but they very often say something like showing that the opponent's line of reasoning leads to an unacceptable conclusion, an undesirable end, something like that. What's great about this, and we'll get into talking about the right answers in a second, is that again, they're just describing the argument. And so, if you know the name of the argument form, they're often just kind of spitting it back at you, but giving it to you a little bit differently.
Branden:
All right. There's one last one, which is introducing new information. So how does that work?
Jelena:
Is what we strive to do for you on this podcast, introduce you to some new information on how to get a good LSAT score, but within the methods of reasoning category, this is usually just bringing in something that my opponent has not considered because I'm talking about a hypothetical Mayoral race today. So let's say we've got again, another Mayoral debate. And somebody's going to say, "My opponent believes that we should . . . the LSAT loves new highways. My opponent is telling you that we should route the new highway through the center of town, because if we route the new highway through the center of town, it will bring additional business from out of town to our central small business district, which contains many shops and restaurants. But what my opponent has not considered is that the endangered leopard tow was recently spotted in the center of town and routing the new highway through the center of town, thus will be very unlikely to be approved by the EPA, after a proper environmental study. So therefore my opponent is wrong to say that we should consider routing the new highway through the center of town.
Jelena:
So instead of actually disputing anything that the opponent has said, which is probably the signature tell of this argument form, you're not saying that, "No, routing the new highway through the center of town would not bring additional business to the central small business district. You're saying, "Yeah, sure. It would, but hang on. There's something completely different that you have not considered, that while I may accept all of the premises of your argument does not allow for your conclusion to be valid, and makes my conclusion that you are wrong instead valid.
Jelena:
Generally, this kind of argument, and really all two prospective arguments on method of reasoning tend to have those kind of, "My opponent is wrong conclusions." They don't have to, but they almost always do. So you might do that while accepting everything about the opponent's argument, except for the conclusion and introducing new information that renders the conclusion invalid.
Jelena:
So we've gone through kind of all of the primary argument forms found in methods of reasoning. I guess all that remains to do is talk about what characterizes our right answers and what tells and traps there might be for wrong answers in this category. Want to give us a little scoop on the answer choices, Brandon?
Branden:
I don't have a whole lot of advice on this, other than to say these questions, just like all other questions, but maybe even more so, you should be anticipating the correct answer. If not having one of these prevalent argument forms in your head, then being able to formulate, like I said, the answer to that question, how do the premises support the conclusion? If you can answer that question in your head, the right answer choice will do it with a bunch of dangling part of simples and suspended clauses, or dependent clauses, or whatever those things are. It will do it in a very LSATy way, but it will accurately characterize how the premises support the conclusion.
Branden:
For wrong answers, it's just kind of finding what the answer is saying that is just not true because four answers are, like we were saying, pretty much with argument structure questions, because I think the criteria are similar. The wrong answers just very often say something that's not true about the stimulus, or they will be talking about something that was not in the stimulus and you have to be very careful about that. These are not like must be true questions where the right answer choice must be guaranteed to be true by the stimulus.
Branden:
However, they should accurately describe the stimulus. And when they start talking about stuff that is not in the stimulus, you are very likely being led astray by the psychometricians at the LSAT. I think that is every bit of advice I have for both of these question types. Any last words on either one before we wrap up here, Jelena?
Jelena:
I think my only last words are simply don't overcomplicate it. Again, you can use that deabstractification method. If you find that you're getting lost in the abstract answers, you can simply replace statements like the conclusion, the opponent's premise, accepting the premises of the opponent's argument while denying their conclusion. You can simply replace those in your head with the specifics from the stimulus, same thing works. But really, when I see people miss these questions, a lot of the time it's because they're wanting them to be more complicated than they are, and they're not.
Jelena:
If you understand the predominant argument forms and you understand the parts of an argument, these questions are simple. The hard part is learning the predominant argument forms and the parts of the argument. Once you've done that, enjoy, pick up your points. That's all I have to say.
Branden:
Well, indeed, and I agree. And that's our prescription for methods of reasoning and argument structure questions. A one, two punch to the LSAT.
Jelena:
Hey, you're not supposed to mix your metaphors.
Branden:
I sense you're trying to undermine me by introducing new information.
Jelena:
Correct answer. Join us next week and every week right here, and thanks as always for listening. And that's our show for today.
Branden:
Thanks for listening.
Jelena:
You can find all of our past episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also send us a question at podcast@testmaxprep.com, or record a short voice message at 310-893-6303.
Branden:
You can also check out the show notes for links to further reading and resources from today's episode.
Jelena:
Until next week, stay hydrated, study hard, and remember, plenty of heroes carry a briefcase.
Branden:
Plenty of heroes carry a briefcase.