Since there is no survival value in an animal's having an organ that is able to function when all its other organs ha...

Mehran on August 29, 2017

@usman the statement you identified is provided to support (i.e. a premise) the conclusion that "cutting City Zoo's funding in half, is false economy."

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

esther on June 7, 2018

I got all these wrong. I not understand how to determine what is the conclusion. in example 4. why is the conclusion not that "saying something that is false can never be other than morally wrong

Christopher on June 11, 2018

@esther, "Saying something that is false can never be other than morally wrong" is a premise. There is nothing in the argument that supports the claim that saying something false is morally wrong, but assuming that saying something false is morally wrong allows Helen to make her point, which was that her brother, Mark, was wrong for lying to their mother.

You've got to look at each statement and figure out which pieces build on the others and which are the building blocks. In example 4, the argument wouldn't progress, "my brother lying to my mother was wrong, therefore lying is wrong." However, it does progress, "lying is wrong, therefore my brother lying to my mother was wrong."

Does that make sense?

SamBaucom on June 27, 2018

Can Someone explain the last question for me. I understood all of the other ones but I thought that the answer for the last one was E-that is always wrong to not tell the truth. I think that the conclusion best supports that and the whole point of the passage was that he was wrong to lie about why he missed the party. Very confused.

Christopher on June 28, 2018

This is a good example of the trick of Main Point questions. In this question, Helen is talking about a situation in which her brother lied to their mother and how that was wrong. With these you're looking for WHY the person is saying what they're saying. In this situation, there is nothing to suggest that Helen is trying to make a universal moral argument about lying being wrong. Rather, she seems to be starting with "it is always wrong not to tell the truth" as a premise to make the point that what her brother Mark did was wrong. So the Main Point of the passage is not that lying is wrong but that what Mark was wrong to have told his mother a lie.

Hope that helps.

JayDee8732 on January 13, 2019

Is it safe to say that the main conclusion has to be a direct statement of the passage in order to be true?

Ela on June 15, 2019

what I find easier for me is to think why is the author explaining all of this? what is he trying to prove?

Ravi on June 15, 2019

@JayDee8732,

Sometimes that's the case, but it's not always that way. Sometimes,
the main conclusion is implicit and is something that we have to infer
based on what we've been given. Other times, it's directly stated in
the passage.

@Noname,

That's a strategy. It's always good to engage with what you're reading
and be thinking to yourself, "What's the point of this? What's the
author trying to show me?"

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions!

AlexaE on March 30, 2020

For the zoo question, I thought the answer was choice D because I thought that statement was the conclusion of the paragraph. However, I was wrong. Is the word "Furthermore" typically indicative of a premise?

Ebony on September 1, 2023

Quick question : Is it safe to say when identifying the Main Point in an argument it will always be restated in some way by the conclusion or should we not bank on that ?

Emil-Kunkin on September 3, 2023

The main point is the conclusion of the argument: and about 95 percent of the time the main point will be explicitly stated. Rarely the conclusion will be implied, but this is a small minority of cases.