HELP!!! weaken the argument questions ???

[amber168]

I am having trouble with weaken the argument questions and get most wrong.  I read the Nova LSAT book a friend gave me but am confused and don't know what to do.  The cause and effect stuff confuses me is it the same as diagramming stuff with arrows?   

[LSAT Eliminator]

Hey Amber,

You've asked three questions in one! So, I'll take the first one, and maybe someone else can grab the other parts.

I'm not the biggest advocate of the Nova book, and I think there are other LSAT books out there that are much better and more detailed (the LSAT Bibles, for one). Regardless, the most important thing with weakening arguments is to know what the premises and conclusions are. Too many people try to answer these questions without knowing what the conclusion is, and then they are susceptible to answers that don't attack the conclusion (and instead address other elements). So, the first rule is to know what the conclusion of the argument is, every single time.

The second thing is to look for holes or assumptions in the argument. If there's a gap somewhere, or if the author made an overly broad assumption, those are areas that are ripe to be weakened and often appear as the correct answer choice. I'll poke around a few tests and point a few questions out to you that operate in this fashion. Let's just say that while my explanation here may not be the best (but hey, I'm watching the JETS while doing this), when you look at questions that use this type of weakening strategy, it is really obvious.

The two steps above should start putting you in the right direction. If you can learn cause and effect, that is another step that will help solve these questions. Lots of weaken questions use causal reasoning, and if you don't understand it, you will miss a lot fo those questions. I'll write another post about that a bit later, or maybe someone else will jump in.

Last, the causal stuff can be diagrammed with arrows, but arrows mostly appear with sufficient and necessary reasoning, which is totally different. That's the third question you asked, and I'll answer that one too.

Thanks and I hope the above info gives you some good stuff to think about. 

[Jeffort]

I am having trouble with weaken the argument questions and get most wrong.  I read the Nova LSAT book a friend gave me but am confused and don't know what to do.  The cause and effect stuff confuses me is it the same as diagramming stuff with arrows?   

With weaken questions the task is to find something that overall, in the context of the entire argument, makes the conclusion less likely to be true.  The credited answer choice DOES NOT have to prove the conclusion to be totally false, it just has to put some doubt about its truth.

A big mistake many people make is thinking that they need to find an answer choice that makes the conclusion totally false or that directly attacks/contradicts it.  That is not a requirement for the correct answer choice. 

With some of the lower difficulty level/easy weaken questions the correct answer will directly attack the conclusion, but ones of that variety do not make up the majority of weaken questions that appear. 

Typically the correct answer will attack an assumption made in the argument, meaning a gap in the premises that are presented to support the conclusion, which can also be described as something that the argument takes for granted as being true without it being explicitly established by the premises.

Due to the nature of the beast the arguments presented are flawed in some or various way (as are almost all LR arguments regardless of the question type).  Consequently the only way to weaken a rock solid logically sound argument is to present an AC that directly proves that one of the premises supporting the conclusion is false.  That is a matter of fact and not a matter of logic.  There have only been a few (I think three) weaken questions since 1991 where the correct answer choice directly attacked/disproved an explicit premise. 

Those were super easy questions that most people got correct.  If a premise says "The sky is blue and there are no clouds out" to support the conclusion "It is not going to rain today" and you have an answer choice to weaken it that says "Dark thunder clouds are overhead", it would be a super easy question that is not testing you about logical reasoning and argumentation. 

Now, back to the ranch about what to think about when analyzing weaken questions. 

Cause and effect arguments are common.  Meaning that the premises describe some circumstances (the described effects) and you are presented with a conclusion that is the author of the arguments opinion about what the cause of them was. 

You should think about and analyze for possible alternative causes, which is the most common type of correct answer choice presented for CE weaken questions.  As well you should be on the lookout for the less common variety where the correct answer choice presents something that describes either an instance of the claimed cause not resulting in the effect or the effect having occurred without the claimed (the conclusion) cause. 

In terms of diagramming, that is mainly used for sufficient and necessary conditional relationships like:

If A then B   A B

Cause and effect relationships that are found in many weaken questions as well as in flawed method of reasoning questions and other types including parallel the reasoning are related and there is some overlap with them to sufficient and necessary conditional logical relationships, but they are not the same and are frequently concepts that are confused and treated as the same. 

To illustrate:

The occurrence of A is dependent on the occurrence of B

A     B

That does NOT necessarily mean that A caused B.  Depending on the way a S/N relationship is presented in the text of a question, the necessary condition may have occurred either before or after the sufficient condition temporally. 

However, where the overlap between sufficient and necessary and cause and effect exists and how it applies to possibly diagramming is like this simple CE example:

Rain falling down causes the streets to get wet.

So you can legitimately diagram that as an S/N relationship.

Rain  streets wet

Bottom line is that you should treat the two concepts as different and look at them differently because they are not the same. 

[amber168]

THNX for the responses and help!  

So I should be looking for cause and effect in these types of questions and trying to figure out assumptions in the arguments and looking for answers that hurt assumptions, did I get that right? I'm going to try more of these questions with this stuff in mind and see how it goes and I'll report back.  Wish me luck that it goes well cuz prepping for this test has been really frustrating for me and makes me feel     and like  

[LSAT Eliminator]

Let's talk a little bit more about cause and effect reasoning (CE). Once you establish that CE is present (Are you comfortable with doing that? Are you familiar with the type of language that normally indicates the presence of CE?), there are really several very standard ways of weakening CE argumentation. Here are some of the most common:

*Look for an answer that discusses an alternate cause to the effect in the argument.

*Look for answers that present examples that counter the CE in the argument. Usually these are examples where either the cause or the effect happens alone.

*Look for an answer that shows that the CE in the argument is backwards.

*Look for an answer that suggests that the information in the argument is partial or incorrect. Usually this means that some type of statistic was given incorrectly, or that a study was done on the wrong group of people, or something similar. These answers have become more frequent in the last five years, and they mostly deal with the info used to make the CE argument.

All of these are really variations on the same theme: to weaken CE, find an answer that suggests that the CE in the argument isn't necessarily true.

[amber168]

Is there a list or can anyone tell me some cause and effect questions to look up so I can get more familiar with it and used to it?  I'm not very good yet at spotting CE and want to be able to work a bunch of them to get it and practice the things you guys said.

 

[Cambridge LSAT]

This is not exhaustive, but it should be a good start.

PT, LR, Number

1, B, 15
3, A, 2
6, A, 6
14, B, 6
18, B, 22
28, A, 26
29, B, 20
29, B, 24
30, B, 11
32, A, 10
32, A, 15
32, B, 1
32, B, 7
32, B, 9
33, A, 1
33, A, 7
33, A, 25
33, B, 7
33, B, 20
33, B, 24
36, A, 4
38, B, 5
39, B, 20
39, B, 26
40, A, 4
40, A, 6
40, A, 13
40, A, 17
40, A, 23
40, B, 2
40, B, 9
40, B, 10
40, B, 24
40, B, 26
41, B, 13
42, A, 3
42, A, 23
42, B, 6
43, A, 8
43, B, 1
43, B, 7
43, B, 19
43, B, 22
44, A, 1
44, A, 4
44, A, 5
44, A, 15
44, A, 20
44, A, 25
44, B, 1
44, B, 9
44, B, 14
44, B, 16
44, B, 17
44, B, 21
45, A, 10
45, A, 12
45, A, 18
45, A, 22
45, B, 4
45, B, 7
45, B, 8
45, B, 11
45, B, 14
45, B, 20
45, B, 24
46, A, 5
46, A, 8
46, A, 12
46, A, 17
46, A, 19
46, A, 22
46, A, 25
46, B, 6
46, B, 13
47, A, 1
47, A, 2
47, A, 10
47, A, 16
47, A, 22
47, A, 23
47, A, 25
47, A, 26
47, B, 2
47, B, 4
47, B, 5
47, B, 6
47, B, 8
47, B, 14
47, B, 24
48, A, 1
48, A, 10
48, B, 2
48, B, 5
48, B, 9
48, B, 11
48, B, 12
48, B, 17
48, B, 24
49, A, 4
49, A, 6
49, A, 10
49, A, 11
49, A, 13
49, A, 26
49, B, 17
49, B, 20
50, A, 17
50, A, 18
50, A, 20
50, A, 21
50, A, 24
50, B, 7
50, B, 9
50, B, 11
50, B, 12
50, B, 19
50, B, 21
50, B, 24
51, A, 8
51, A, 12
51, A, 24
51, A, 25
52, A, 2
52, A, 12
52, A, 14
52, A, 15
52, B, 6
52, B, 9
52, B, 11
52, B, 19
53, A, 3
53, A, 5
53, A, 8
53, A, 15
53, A, 17
53, A, 19
53, B, 9
53, B, 11
53, B, 20
53, B, 23

[Ashley O]

Here are words and phrases from the LRB to look for when trying to spot cause and effect logic:

caused by
because of
reponsible for
reason for
leads to
induced by
promoted by
determined by
produced by
product of
played a role in
was a factor in
is an effect of

Once you look back at questions you missed, you may find one of these phrases in the stimulus. It's funny how easy they are to miss while you are reading.

[Jeffort]

Is there a list or can anyone tell me some cause and effect questions to look up so I can get more familiar with it and used to it?  I'm not very good yet at spotting CE and want to be able to work a bunch of them to get it and practice the things you guys said.

 

In addition to that huge list Cambridge LSAT posted (Wow dude!  )  one particular LR problem that has 4 answer choices that weaken the causal argument using some of the different ways described above is Question #11 in the second LR section of the December 2004 LSAT (PT 45, Section 4, #11).  It is a rare question type but is valuable because it provides 4 different examples of things that can weaken the same causal argument. 
The question type is rare but in essence a weaken and strengthen question combined together along with EXCEPT:

The answer to each of the following questions would
be helpful in evaluating the representatives’ claim
EXCEPT:

Check it out, it's an excellent question to use to teach people about CE and the common ways to weaken a CE argument.

[sofapotato]

A lot of times I used to get Strengthen/Weaken questions wrong because I pick the exact OPPOSITE answer (like a "strengthen" answer choice when the question asks for you to "weaken").  I've started writing down "S" or "W" next to each answer choice, and it's helped me greatly in addition to practicing only questions of that type in one sitting.