The stable functioning of a society depends upon the relatively long-term stability of the goals of its citizens. Thi...
DalaalFebruary 21, 2020
Identifying conclusions
Should every sentence in the argument play some role in supporting the conclusion, meaning every generalization, principle, claim, and phenomenon should play a role to support the conclusion (if themselves were not the conclusion)? I ask this because one of the ways provided to identify conclusions is that they never support anything else in the stimulus rather they are the ones being supported. Are conclusions the only statements in the passage that don't offer support or could there be something else in the passage that is indifferent and doesn't offer any support to other parts of the passage?
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Thanks for the question! In one sense, yes, every single sentence does play some role in supporting the conclusion. Sometimes, you don’t necessarily have to diagram those sentences out, like when a premise is given and then an example illustrating that premise follows it. The example in one sense isn’t “adding†to the logical structure of the diagram, it’s more providing a reason to think that we can accept the premise (which we generally do anyway on the LSAT). Otherwise, yes, conclusions are the only statements in the passage that don’t offer support to other statements in the passage.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
