Weaken Questions (Advanced) with Lewis

we can say I can't remember So you can talk okay, you're driving okay, yeah focus on the road sorry, and I Also a couple of people have joined so we have people to share You're safe, okay you're free.

Thank you for chatting.

Okay. Okay, welcome everyone else I'm just gonna watch here in a little bit since it's already 107 But Good to see some familiar faces Maybe one or two new faces to I'm sure if it's the worst, but yeah either anyway today's Today's discussion is gonna be weekend questions Which is a it's

Describes it a dance lesson, and that's because this is a pretty it can be a tricky topic in many ways Arguably strengthen weekend and maybe a couple of other slightly more niche question types are sort of the final Pearl of the exam.

You could do them that way. I think I do them that way actually Yeah, so Say a little more about that before I want to properly I mean basically we can questions and strengthen questions and error and reasoning questions and lot of parallel reasoning questions and Even paradox questions and most principal Questions, they're really all asking you to do the same thing, which is just can you?

Great precision identify the logical failing of the invalid argument they've shown you. Okay, now I'm stressing invalidity, but I realized to be slightly more accurate, we have to distinguish two types of questions.

About half of the arguments they show you, maybe more nowadays, are actually not arguments that they want you to evaluate in a strict logical fashion.

They're what you might call, they reflect instead what you might call instead of deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning. So what they really are is they're engaged in like a form of empirical reasoning where essentially they assert an apprentice that they've observed through experimentation or some other form of data collection, some, some correlation between two properties, and then they go on to refer that there's some particular causal relationship on.

Now, the The thing here is that you should understand that that form of reasoning from correlation to causation is never deductively valid, but that isn't the point that they want you to be making.

Except the point of these questions isn't, oh, they try to infer causation from correlation, and you can't do that, so that's fallacious reasoning.

No, That's not how you're supposed to read it at all. Technically, it's true that these arguments are not deductively valid, but that isn't a good basis for rejecting this form of reasoning out of hand.

After all, this form of reasoning represents like 90% of human progress in the last century or two. Okay, and it also represents the form of reasoning that's being engaged in in every corporate board room when they make

makes strategy decisions based on data of any kind. And it represents the form of reasoning that's being relied on by every social scientist and every scientist in every field of science when they publish the results of some experiment, or some poll, or some whatever, and they try to reach conclusions about any interesting question.

So the fact that this form of reasoning from evidence to a causal conclusion is not deductively valid, is not good grounds for rejecting ahead of hand.

And actually when you are faced with those questions, you're expected to essentially approach them in a completely different way and hold them to different standards.

So I think it's always essential when you're reading these questions that you can tell the difference between whether you're dealing with correlation causation or whether you're dealing with strict logical deduction.

When you're dealing with strict logical deduction, deduction, all of these questions about the same thing. Where is the logical gap in the argument?

Can you identify precisely? When you're dealing with induction, you still need to, in a precise way, identify a flaw with the argument, but it isn't going to be a logical gap.

Instead, what you're looking for is essentially a, it's completely different process because in the, in the deductive case, common sense is the enemy, and common sense, and even all content is irrelevant.

It's all about structure, not about content. On the other hand, when you're dealing with the inductive reasoning, you need common sense, and what you're supposed to be trying to figure out is, essentially, you're supposed to be nitpicking their argument for a lack of controls on the experiment.

In other words, what are alternative plausible, where plausible requires common sense? What are alternative plausible explanations? For the data they saw, other than the explanation they're offering and their conclusion.

Okay, now that was a lot to say in the air. So I understand if that may have been a little bit, whatever.

I want to elaborate on this more in a second. I'm going to pull off a whiteboard and try to dig deeper into these concepts.

But before I do, let me say one last thing is setting a ground rule. So I want you guys, this is actually a pretty small crowd.

I'm actually surprised why how small this crowd is, but because, you know, it's September, but I guess I guess the test just happens that people are probably little tired.

But given that it's a small crowd. I don't want any of any of you guys to feel too much pressure.

I know Joseph's actually driving right now so he probably can't participate for the most part. But anyone who wants to should just unmute themselves and speak up at any point.

You can interrupt me. I will not only why not be offended. I'll be happy. The interaction is great. makes these classes more exciting.

Also feel free to type anything you want in chat and I'll be reading chat on the side here. see it.

Also, fair warning. I have a tutoring session at 2 p.m. Eastern. So at the end of this. So I won't be able to stay over like I sometimes do.

I'll have to stop this call, you know, promptly at two. Okay, but other than that, yeah, I mean, oh, yeah, the other thing I want to say is if you guys have questions about any topic and it doesn't just have to be weakening, I'm also happy to feel that.

Okay, give me about anything else that related or even law school application related. Yeah, so feel free to ask.

Okay, and without those ground rules out of the way, what's I'm going to open a whiteboard here and let's get going.

Okay. Okay. Can you guys see this? Okay, so. All right, so I have to break this discussion of we can questions into two parts.

Okay, we have to distinguish inductive reasoning from deductive reasoning or else nothing actually makes sense at the fundamental level.

So let's start by talking about deduction. So deduction is the field of strict logic now. Okay, formal classical logic.

This is conditional logic like you would learn in a first order logic course in college or something like that.

Okay, now as as actual complexity goes logically speaking, they don't give complicated arguments. What they do though is they give arguments that are complicated in their use of English and hard to adequately reduce sometimes, if you're not used to it, to representation, in formal logic.

Now there's one The other thing I want to say, which is even when dealing with these deductive questions, you don't actually need to ever bother giving what they say symbolic representation.

can, many tutoring services, including ours, will try to teach you how to do it. But it's rarely is that actually the best way to go.

I've never bothered to do that in my life. to be clear, that's not because I don't like the formal representation.

I actually love formal logic. I have a very extensive background in it. I have an extensive background in math too.

I mean, I took a number of very serious math courses, like in the math department undergraduate, and I did high level physics courses as well.

So it's not like I'm not a math person. I love math. I did first order logic. I also took mathematical logic.

I also took graduate level seminar and group and girls and completeness theorems and computer ability and stuff like that.

So I love that. I just don't think it's the most efficient or even the best way of representing the questions on the LSAT personally.

That's my view. Well, many tutors would probably regard that as a hot take, but yeah, so just to be clear, I don't only say you don't have to do this in case you don't like math, I love math and I don't do it.

But you still need to understand the concepts that underlie formal logic, okay? So that's what I'm going to try to go over here, I'm going be conceptual.

So now we're doing deduction, formal logic, okay? And the first distinction, I'm just going to define these concepts. do this for my students in one-on-one tutoring all the time.

We have to distinguish two properties of an argument. This is what you would learn in any good analytical philosophy course, okay?

We could talk about valid arguments and we could talk about sound arguments. Can anyone tell me what these two things mean or either one would start with validity?

What makes an argument valid? This is the most important question on the LSAT. What does it mean for argument to you about it?

Okay, I will define these. It's sort of slightly less precise, maybe a little more intuitive definition of validity. Is it provable?

Actually, has nothing to do with provability at all, interestingly enough. And we're going to get to that point. Okay, although that's not a bad guess and probably a very good.

That's probably a good explanation of what most people mean when they say, I actually, I don't even know. People mean all kinds of different things.

That's at least one common usage that you'll find. is tied to provability for the word valid? Oh yeah, that's a valid point.

That might be what people often mean. Nowadays people will say valid and I don't know what the . Oh yeah, that's a valid perspective.

And by that they mean some kind of weird, post-modern, totally deconstructed thing about how there is those such thing as truth and everyone's lived experience is beautiful or something, something utterly meaningless and nonsense to go like that.

Yeah, oh, that's valid. That's your feelings are valid. It's an utterly meaningless statement. What does it mean to say that feelings are valid?

It doesn't mean anything. can talk about feelings can be authentic or inauthentic. Someone can be lying about their feelings or they can be honest about them.

That's a meaningful distinction. Assuming someone's being honest about their feelings that that is authentically how they feel, I don't know what the next question is supposed to be.

Are they allowed to feel that? Yeah, of course. I don't think there's anyone alive who thinks that there are no criminal feelings.

Okay. I mean, we don't have thought crime in this country. Should the fact that someone fuels a thing automatically guide their own behavior or anyone else's?

Usually no, maybe for some feelings. If you're feeling hungry, that might be a sufficient basis for eating. If you're feeling offended, that's usually not a sufficient basis for anything.

We have to ask further questions. why are you offended? Do you have good reason to be offended? If you both feel offended and have good reason to be offended, those together might give your interlocutor good reason to apologize to you.

I don't know where various other things can happen. But anyway, we're not using validity in any of those ways.

I don't mean feelings are valid, and I don't mean, well, that's a valid point in the sense that you think you can prove it, okay?

This is now in the sense of formal logic, strictly speaking. What it means, a valid argument is an argument whose conclusion follows logically.

from its premises. Okay, now we're gonna do a better answer from Jeff. So, Jeff says, I don't know how you're typing this back.

You get some long red lights going on here. I mean, I'm glad you're doing it. Just stay safe out there on the road, okay?

Back it off, that's why. Okay, great. Okay, good. Now I don't have to feel guilty every time I see you.

Okay, logical and non-contradictory relationship. So, yeah, so this is good. This is correct. But I'm still gonna want to dig a little deeper here.

Okay, and that's what I've written here. Conclusions follows logically from its premises. The premises also do need to be non-contradictory.

Actually, oh wait, actually hold on. Is that a requirement logical validity? I'm looking this up now, I'm not sure.

I think it is, but. Okay, hold on, let's see. Um, so, uh, let's see. Right. No, yeah, you're right.

I actually couldn't find this googling, but I can deduce the answer myself. It requires too much. A little too much formal logic to prove, but yes, they do have to be non-conjugated.

That's true. And you need. you call the logical relationship. What I said here is the conclusion following logically. Okay, but the hard question here is, what does it mean?

What does this mean? What does it mean for the conclusion to follow logically from its premises? Well, I'll just give the real definition, so the real definition is, if all the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true, okay, that's what it means.

Another statement of this would be, it is impossible for the premises of a valid argument to all be true and for the conclusion to nevertheless still be false.

It's impossible logically speaking, not even within the laws of physics, without even going beyond the laws, it's logically impossible, okay, in no possible world could the premises all be true in the conclusion false, okay?

That's the idea of validity. So to be clear, validity does not depend on the truth of the premises at all.

The truth of the premises is irrelevant. The only question is, if they were true, is there any space for the conclusion?

to still be false or not. They don't need to be true. This is why provability or evidence or something ends up not not mattering.

The premises don't have to be well supportive. They don't really have to be true. They don't have to be provable either.

The only question is if they were supposing they were true. Okay, now to give you an example, all carrots are vegetables.

This is a carrot. Therefore, this is a vegetable. This is valid. But uh, so this is valid. All carrots are vegetables.

This is a carrot. This is a vegetable. Because you know, if these two things were true, then this would have to be true, right?

By the way, these also seem true. But like, I can make this stupider and it can stay valid. All carrots are aliens.

This is a carrot. Therefore, this is an alien. This is still valid. That's valid. I mean, now I'm pretty sure this is a false premise, but that's irrelevant.

If it were true that all character aliens, I could suppose it's true. And whatever this is, is a carrot, then I guess it would also have to be an alien.

There's no way. There's no way for this to be false unless one of the premises is false. So it's a valid argument.

Okay. So that's, sorry. So that's validity. Anyone want to guess what soundness is? I'll give you a hint, soundness is better than But irrelevant on the else that.

Soundness doesn't exist on the else that, but in real life, it does. And it's better. better than validity. How would you improve on validity here?

Yes, exactly what you just wrote is true, just exactly. So you say here, validity equals the premises regardless of whether they're actually true, necessarily get the conclusion, and that is precisely the soundness he's as now is valid with probably true premises.

That's, I love how you hedged that, you were wrong to hedged it, but it's a nice point. Okay, that's wrong, soundness is valid plus true premises, actually true.

Now I understand why you wanted to hedge this, oh, you already edited it, you got to write that. Okay, but by the way, nevertheless, I actually liked that hedge, I thought it was nice.

mean, one reason that I would have intuitively said something like that too, something seems wrong about insisting on actual truth, because actual truth is in some sense never absolutely

we knowable by humanity, right? I mean, presuming that you agree that the Cartesian project failed and there are no propositions that anyone has ever discovered that are non-trivial, whose truth we cannot plausibly doubt.

I mean, another way of looking at this is we've never been able to beat the skeptic completely on any important point.

Actually, we can get even worse with it. I mean, I told you, I took a fragile level course where we prove criminals and complete this theorem.

Well, arguably girls that complete this theorem says that there are going to be at least some statements that are potentially true but not provable in any interesting system, including all systems of human language and even all formal systems created by humans.

So at the very least, there are going to be some statements. I would go further because of the successive skeptic arguments and say, probably all, but they're going to, as a matter of...

of math alone, in other words, logic alone. are gonna be some statements that are potentially true, but not provable always.

Well, so at least for those statements, we won't know whether an argument built out of those claims as premises is necessarily sound or not, because we don't know that they're true.

We can't prove it. It might actually turn out to be sound, but we wouldn't know for sure. We might make mistake of thinking it sound when it's not.

Well, that's okay. Regardless, regardless of whether it's knowable, soundness is valid plus true premises. And as you can see, the elegant thing here is we don't need to specify a true conclusion in the definition of soundness.

It's not necessary. If it's valid and the premises are true, then the conclusion also has to be true. There's no need to stipulate that though.

That follows from the meaning of validity and the truth of the premises. So that's nice. Now, I wanna make one last question here.

Why does a sound argument have to be valid? Why didn't I just say a sound argument is any argument that has true premises and a true conclusion?

There, let's pretend it was that for a second. What's wrong with this definition? Someone's shown me why this is a terrible definition.

Prove it to me. Give me an example, maybe. Or just explain it. Well, yeah, and we can even work backwards.

I essentially told you what it was missing because the last one was correct and this is incorrect. But I want you to feel why this fails.

The point is to motivate why we needed validity in the definition. Yes. Oh, sorry. You had a fall up there.

was perfectly blue. Yeah, exactly. The premise is most right to one another. answer. Exactly. So, I mean, I could have true premises and a true conclusion that are completely unrelated, and that's not a good argument.

you know, grass is green. Therefore, lying is wrong. Like, what? The what? This is not this is worthless. This is a terrible argument, regardless of the fact that it's premises true, and its conclusion is true.

Okay. So, the point of all of it. So, let's go back to the right. It's valid plus true premise.

Okay. Now, the last thing to say really quickly is on the LSAT, we only care about validity, not soundness.

And if you're wondering why that is, of course, we care about soundness normally. If I'm a philosopher, I care about making sound arguments.

I'm a physicist, a mathematician, lawyer, it doesn't matter. Whoever, anyone engaged in serious, you try to make sound arguments.

In fact, there are plenty of valid arguments that are on Internet. Uninteresting and they're worthless like all carrots are aliens therefore whatever like at that point.

So in real life soundness is the goal But soundness is irrelevant on this test. Why? for a couple reasons, but most of them have to do with fairness It would it would be an unfair the test would have insane Prerequisites of course work if you were expected to be able to engage like an expert in all of the subjects that they cover On the matter of truth like they give you some Claims about evolutionary biology and now you need to worry about whether they're true.

Oh, we You got to be an expert in that but also apparently in geology also in legal history. You haven't even got the law school yet Also in moral philosophy in in economics.

What right? it'd be a crazy unfair test That's one two you don't have the resources that you would need to take the test Like even a single LR question that starts by asserting some

studies showed recently that jogging is correlated with reducing your risk of lung cancer. Well, stop the test. I need access to that full study and methodology.

I need to know the name of the author. I need a JSTOR account because I need to look up every other study that's been done on this.

Has it been reproducible? Actually, hold on. I need 48 hours to answer this one question. Actually, no more than that.

I need three to four years, maybe five. I think I need a PhD and a lab so that I can try to perform an experiment myself and investigate possible, right?

It would be . It makes no sense. Now, there are other reasons, too, that have to do with objectivity.

Even if you paddle those resources, it wouldn't be an objective test if we need to know that truth. Since truth is debatable at the edges of every discipline, right?

Especially in disciplines like moral philosophy that are very significant to law. It's not even a universal kept in proposition within moral philosophy, whether or not moral statements have truth value.

There are very popular meta ethical views, I don't subscribe to them, but there may be more popular than the others that say there isn't truth in the matter of moral propositions, maybe they don't even have truth value.

So in any event, the test would be, you know, insane if you needed soundness. So soundness doesn't exist, literally is all that exists.

And that means when they ask you to critically engage with arguments, they are never ever asking you to critically engage with the truth of any of the claims being made.

The only question when we're dealing with logical deduction is whether the conclusion follows from the premises, and that can be evaluated on the supposition that the premises are all true.

By the way, when I say premises here, I'm speaking more broadly than when the test uses the term premise, because when they say premise, they usually are referring only to premises

No support, but I'm including also what they would call subsidiary conclusions by say this Anything other than the final conclusion.

Okay, you can just simply stipulate that they're true and go from there Okay, so there are two points here that i'm going to now illustrate with an example And they are they go together truth doesn't matter and the second point is also the same truth doesn't matter So what makes an argument good or bad is has nothing to do with the truth of any of the claims in it An argument can be good and have absurd false premises It can be good as a matter of its logical structure.

It can be valid It can also be a bad argument by their lights and nevertheless have true premises and a true conclusion as we showed So i'm going to give you guys an example I'm going to ask you to weaken it understand that by weaken we mean strictly weaken With respect to its formal validity

Okay, okay, some of you may have seen this example before for me in which case, you know, I don't know what to say, but whatever.

I always use the name Edgar for this example and I have no idea why. I don't know, it was totally random.

Okay, Edgar says the following. Yesterday, I looked at the ground. And I swear it would occur. Therefore, the earth must actually be round.

Okay, which of the following, if true, most weakens the argan. Alright, I will give three answers. Okay, what do you guys think?

Take your time. We'll give you a minute or two to percolate. You You All right anyone else want to weigh in?

Well as I'm gonna have little back and forth with justice here. We have a vote for B. How does everyone else feel?

Before anyone actually justifies an answer though to me. Can someone just tell me how they feel about his argument?

Two votes for B. Is this already there? Good or bad. How do you guys you guys like this argument?

is a good argument Hey, Pierre. Yeah, this is a stew. This is supposed to be an unbelievably stupid argument, right?

Three votes for B I don't even talk about these answer choices yet. Can someone just how Joseph hates the argument?

How do the rest of you feel about the circuit? You This is an easy question. This should be a very easy question.

This is a stupid argument, right? But okay, can someone just what's wrong with this argument? Why is this argument bad?

You I guess in some ways he's trying to go on empirical evidence. mean, yeah, just the most worth was empirical evidence, but what a dubious logical week.

So I agree with that, but so just it. So do you dislike this argument because you think it's conclusion, because you think the conclusion is false?

I mean, I assume not, right? think the conclusion is probably true. go talk to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It could be like two feet around looking at his evidence is terrible. It's not good enough, but to be clear.

Your objection to the argument isn't that you think the conclusion is false. Is it that you think the premise is false?

You're right. And that is the flaw. That's so it has nothing to do with the premise of the conclusion is false.

It's about it's about whether the premise is added with evidence to establish the conclusion, which is the logical leap, which is exactly what the test wanted to worry about.

But then why do you pick answer B? Who cares whether he was right about the ground he was looking at?

Your whole objection is it doesn't matter, even if he was right about what the ground looked like, but the realm of it.

I'll A for the wrong reason when I show it to them. They don't like A because... Because who in their right mind would form beliefs this way?

Well, unfortunately, it turns out a lot of people, apparently, if you look at some of the data on American, where Americans get their news and even worldwide.

But, you know, this is not there are a lot of things to dislike about A, but but none of them are the right way to approach the test after all.

The question says, which is wrong? If true would weaken the argument? So as stupid as this is, the claim being made is that these videos prove that the earth is flat.

Well, not to get too, you know, philosophical here, but proof is a fact of property. You can't prove something that's false.

So if A is true, then that would mean that the earth is actually flat. It's still not the right answer though, because the flaw with the argument wasn't that it had a false conclusion.

It doesn't even have a false conclusion. This is true. That's not the issue. So fighting with the conclusion. and does not correctly diagnose the flaw in the reasoning.

It's not obvious what B is even doing, by the way. I really read this carefully in Knit Pickett, I don't even think it's disagreeing with the premise.

Technically, Edgar's premise was even stupider than you thought. He just said the ground looked curved to him. It doesn't actually contradict that to say that video footage disagrees with his feeling.

To use the thing I was attacking earlier, his feelings are valid. No, I'm just kidding. But regardless of whether it was actually flat, it still looked curved to him and that was the premise.

But even if this did contradict the premise, which it obviously is trying to, that's not what's wrong with the argument.

The argument isn't bad because this is false. Everyone reading this knew immediately that this was a bad argument, but no one thought that because they thought Edgar was wrong.

They had no reason to think Edgar was wrong about this claim. The issue was exactly what Joseph said the whole time, which is this is not a good enough reason to think that this is true.

There's a logical, massive, logical leap. That's the flaw. So B doesn't point out the flaw in the argument at all.

C, well, I actually don't understand why. No one I show this to like C. Everyone hates it. But if the way you answer, strengthen, and weaken questions, is you read an answer is like this and go, well, this seems out of scope because we're not talking about the International Space Station.

We're talking about the Earth. I hate to say it, but you're way off. That is just not understanding the task.

The question isn't, can you find an answer choice that is fully supported by the claims that were already named?

This is not a must be true. It's the opposite. They ask, which I'm calling if true? Every answer choice here can be about any subject it wants.

The question is just if this factual claim were true, would that undermine the argument? In particular, what they mean by undermine the argument is not undermine the truth of its conclusion or the truth of its premises.

What they mean is would it undermine the implicit logical connection between the premises they gave and the conclusion? Well, that's what C does.

Edgar is inferring that the whole earth is round based on some patch of ground that he's looking at. Well, the question is whether that inference works.

It works if in general it's appropriate to assume that if a patch of brown looks curved the entire body it must be round.

But what the ISS example shows is that's not that doesn't generalize. There are other contexts where a floor could look curved in places and that doesn't other contexts it must be a bad inference period.

Thus this weakens the argument. It indicates the logical flaw in the reason. It shows the weak because how does Edgar know that the Earth is going to behave well for him here rather than like the ISS?

has... His evidence is just as good in this case as it would be in that case, although in that case he would have happened to get the answer wrong.

He got to say something really good here in chat. just saw this. Oh, sorry. I missed three things. In a row, yeah.

Joe exactly sees a concrete example of where the leap doesn't work. Like he got lucky here, but it screws up here and that shows that it was never a good inference.

Now, yeah, yeah, you were too suspicious, right? Yeah, but it doesn't. So it's not a strike against an answer on the strings or on weakens that it brings up facts that are not mentioned in the prompt.

They're supposed be. do that. We're looking for additional information of any kind that would bear on the question at hand.

Now, answers can still be rejected for being irrelevant, but it wouldn't be because we didn't discuss that factual subject.

It would be because even if that's true, it has no bearing on the underlying logic of the argument. This does have bearing on the logic.

That's why it's a good answer. Exhibit, a special orbital property unlike any other, I've no idea if this is true.

I'm making this up completely. Spatial body and our spatial and our solar system. I'm sure this is false, by the way, but suppose I just gave an answer like this.

Well, this is a terrible answer. It's a not a bad answer because we're not talking about Jupiter. It's a bad answer because it has nothing to do with the logic of the argument in the first place.

That's why it's a bad answer, right? Now, thoughts about though, I want to address what you were saying. C-challenges the assumption.

Yes, that's exactly what's going on, okay? The correct way to anticipate any deductive weaken is the same way to anticipate a deductive strengthen.

What you want to do is figure out every time they ask you to weaken the argument, by necessity, the argument they've shown you is not a valid argument as written, it's invalid.

Any invalid argument can be made valid with the addition of a further assumption. So, what you want to do is ask yourself what further assumption could be added to this that would make it logically valid.

That's... Just another way of asking, what is the underlying logical leap being performed? So let's get rid of all this.

What is an assumption that if added would make this a valid argument? someone give me an assumption? So just as things that appear flat are flat, isn't that just reversed?

Right? It's things that occur curved around.

You're good. perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. So, yeah. Essentially, something like this. I mean, I like what you said.

Actually, yours is way more elegant. was going to say some nasty nonsense thing that was not very good. My instinct is always to say as close to their language as possible, but I actually like your answer better.

I'll show you what I would have written and it's fine, but yours is a little slicker. Just like if a small portion of a body appears curved, then the overall body.

Must be around. It's just kind of wordy and nasty. I like yours, actually. going use yours here. Yeah, actually.

So we have a similarly wordy instinct to mine, which is also good. So it's a good answer to an individual's perception of the part is indicative of the nature of the whole.

That's a really nice answer. But let's just go with with just here because it's actually kind of common sentiment.

Nice. Things that appear round or curved, rather, and I'm going to add in places. Must be round overall, right?

Okay? That's the general assumption here. What's missing is a generalization that would explain how I can infer from this fact this further fact.

This is the assumption. Now, the task of every weekend question is just to attack that assumption. So what's hard about them?

you have to do two tasks. One, you have to find the assumption. Two, you have to attack the assumption.

The second step is the easy part. The hard part is finding. That's why all weekends are just the same as strengthens to me.

They're all just as easy as each other or just as hard. It's just, can you find the missing assumption?

Now, why are you allowed to attack this assumption? Isn't this assumption like a premise? And aren't we supposed to suppose all premises are true?

Why are we allowed to attack this premise and not any other premise? Well, the answer is just, they never said it, okay?

You need to defer to the assertions they make, but you don't need to defer to an assertion they never made.

The point of what's going on here is by attacking the assumption that the argument essentially needs to make to work as a matter of logic.

What you're doing is explaining why it's never going to be a viable argument. Logically speaking. Essentially what you're doing is saying, even if I accept every claim you've made, your argument will never work logically speaking because it needs even more assumptions than you've been willing to give and those assumptions are absurd.

The right answer to every single weaken question, at least that is, in the space of deductive reasoning, is an answer that attacks the implicit assumption of the argument, okay?

So this is how you want to approach that. these things to nail them. Now, this is an advanced topic, truly.

If you're still struggling to break into the low 150s and you're starting out in your LSAT journey and you're not familiar with formal logic and concepts like this, this would be probably a bad place to start.

I would instead think you should start by trying to get more familiar with the structure of arguments holistically. What are the parts of an argument?

What makes something a premise or a subsidiary conclusion or the final conclusion? How do I identify them reliably? so on, maybe certain more foundational concepts like conditional statements and the difference between the sufficient condition versus the necessary condition.

These are probably better places to start. But when you've started to get solid on those points, this is arguably the most important next step in my view.

Understandings. So I'll give you another example really quickly. Actually, I don't have time to give another example. I'm sorry.

I want to quickly talk about how things change a little bit when we're no longer doing deductive reasoning, but we're doing inductive reasoning instead.

But before I make that that transition, are there any questions on this on this whole line of whatever. Okay, will give another example.

I'll give two examples quickly. Okay, imagine someone gave this argument. Really quickly, what's the missing assumption here? If you, why do your wife or that, exactly.

Okay. No, because you could actually be a bad wife because it's 2024, just kidding. Yeah, a bad spouse, whatever.

You got the point. Okay. So, by the way, is this true? Really? Really? That's a little too harsh. What have you been a faithful husband for 40 years and a great loving father and you raised several children and you supported your family?

And then you were trying to be on a diet one night and you snuck like an Oreo cookie at night and she asked, did you just eat an Oreo and embarrassed you lied about it?

Like, obviously not like this is an absurd. This is an absurd client. He needs to know way more than this.

Maybe we can start editing it to make it more plausible if you're a lie to your wife about something really serious.

And obviously, by the way, no, no, hold on. You guys are being way, the level of charity you're extending to this assumption is not going to help you on this test, OK?

It's actually, it is actually a form of, it might be a decent thing to do in the context of a conversation with somebody, or even a good debate where you want to try to help guide them to a superior restatement of their principle.

But this principle is not defensible, even along the lines that you guys are indicating. Even if you think in general lying is a bad thing to do, that doesn't have to defend this assumption.

This assumption is way stronger than you're seeing. It's. says, if you lie to your wife, then you're a bad husband, that means a single lie of any kind absolutely guarantees that you've earned the designation bad husband.

It doesn't give any clarification or qualification for the severity of the lie. In fact, according to this principle, if on my wife's debt bed, as she's, you know, like, we get into a car crash and I see, you know, she's kind of still alive barely, but she's about to die.

She's been impaled in like the movie. And she looks at me goes, everything's going to be okay, right? And I see there's no hope for her and she's imminently going to die.

And I decide to give her comfort in her last moment. I say, of course, it's going to be fine.

We're going to get you home. And you know, it's good. And it's a tear jerker moment. According to this principle, that's a bad husband because he just lied to his wife.

And I'm not being unfair for the principle. That is the meaning of the principle. I am just reading the principle in a logically precise way.

way. It's a bad principle. That doesn't mean the argument can't be redeemed. Actually, this is a bad argument because this principle is bad.

There might be variations on this principle that are defensible. Again, if you lie to your wife for selfish reasons about something that isn't trivial, then you're a bad husband, I still would fight with that, but that's at least plausible.

But this is not plausible. But notice, this is the assumption the argument is making. They didn't tell you what his motivation is.

And they didn't tell you whether the lie was serious or trivial. They gave you no information on that point.

Remember, formal logical validity means it's impossible for this premise to be true and for this conclusion to be false.

Even a single hypothetical, even a far-fetched one, where this premise could be true, but this would be false, isn't enough to destroy the argument as a matter of logical validity.

Well, that's why the kind of charitability, many of you were trying to extend, is misunderstanding the task. You're not supposed to be charitable.

You're not supposed to assume away the problems. You're supposed to see the weakness in the argument is they didn't give me enough.

What if he lied to his wife just to save her feelings? What if he lied to his wife just to help her, to spare her pain?

What if he lied to his wife in order to save the lives of their children? What if he lied to their wife in order to save the lives of everyone on earth?

Because a crazy cyber terrorist was gonna kill everybody if he didn't do it. And the lie he told was incredibly trivial on top of that.

What then? Then I don't think he would be a bad husband. In that case, this isn't a good argument.

Do you see the point I'm trying to make? That isn't being unfair or unchartable to the argument. It's evaluating it according to the very high standards of logical validity.

And it turns out that attacking the validity of the argument is the same thing as attacking this assumption. Okay, I ended up sending the whole time talking about this side of things.

this is the by far the more interesting and substantive side of things. We didn't really get to induction and giving seeing that I have to give up on that.

Let me instead ask, are there any questions on this point or challenges to anything I've said? Anyone want to step into the ring here?

Does this make sense? Questions, comments, concerns? Questions on anything? Because this is your last chance. have to go in the next minute.

Sorry, what do you mean by what are key things to watch? Do you mean like video resources or do you mean like things to look out for when you're, I just want to make sure I understand the question.

Oh yeah, watch out for the question. Sorry, no, no, no, you just, you fixed it. Yeah, sorry. I spoke too soon.

Yeah, yeah. So, when you're dealing with these deductive questions, again, it's a little different if it's a cause and effect thing, if it's causing

In fact, you just want to think what else could explain this, this trend that they observed, and then point out and then pick any answer that offers an alternative possible explanation or other evidence that would indicate an alternative explanation, right?

But when you're dealing with the type we've been talking about, these deductive reasoning questions, you want to, the real question is, what is the logical fallacy here?

Where is the leap in their logic? Don't worry about whether the conclusion is plausible or whether the premises are plausible.

We're only about, okay, treat the premises like their rules, their rules governing this question. They can't even be doubted.

So even supposing all these things are true, is there still any room for doubting the conclusion? If so, I want to grab that little, it can sometimes be a very small leap, a very small hole.

You want to rip it apart, you want to widen that hole, you want to really exploit it to attack the argument, okay, but if you want to be really

Formal you should do exactly what you asked early. I think it was new blue. I can't remember now Oh, maybe it was fought them up.

What was there? you want to identify that assumption and then attack it explain why that is false This thing is the thing to attack and it isn't going to be in their Passage, it's not in there, but the outline of it is okay Don't attack their premises and also don't attack their conclusion Find the assumption that they need to add to what they've already given to justify the conclusion and then attack that Okay, that's the task All right guys, I'm out of here off to a tutor accession, but it was great to see you all Thank you for all the participation It got lively at the end and I appreciate that it makes it I hopefully more engaging for viewers in the future You