Any tricks to identifying Premise/Conclusion in LR stimulus? Forum

[ccordero]

So after a while of studying thru the PS LRB, I've found that whenever I get a question wrong, it happens the most when I misidentify what the conclusion was or its premises. I misidentify the conclusion when the stimulus reveals the conclusion early into the stimulus and the premises follows after it, with maybe some subconclusions in there too. Sometimes there are no 'indicator' keywords to identify.

Does anyone have any other tricks that they use to correctly identify when this happens? I will of course be re-reading the first part of the LRB to see if I missed something...

[DSman]

One thing you can do is try to repeat the stimulus in your head and attach your own indicators and see if it makes sense. So rephrase it and maybe attach a "therefore" to what you think might be the conclusion and see if it works.

If you are given random info like, say:

This car can't work in very cold conditions. This car will not work today. Very cold conditions are considered to be -10 or below. Today it is -15.

The second sentence is the conclusion. I know its an easy example but lets say you weren't sure if the conclusion was the second sentence or the last one. In your head you would rephrase it. So you would think, "This car can't work in very cold conditions and very cold conditions are considered to be -10 or below and this car will not work today. Therefore, today it is -15". Does that make sense? No. It doesn't have to be -15 today. That is not a logical conclusion. Bow if you rephrased it again and thought, "This car can't work in very cold conditions. Very cold conditions are considered to be -10 or below. Today it is -15. Therefore this car will not work today". That sounds logical.

Try it with some real LSAT questions and see if it works. Also, maybe get the Powerscore Logical Reasoning Bible. Its a good book and it has some stuff on identifying the premises and conclusions.

[cc.celina]

Simple way to identify whether or not a sentence is a conclusion is to ask "Why?" If you can't find a reason why it's true, it's a premise. If you can, it is either an intermediate conclusion or a conclusion. The conclusion will be the sentence that draws on all the other evidence in the stimulus, including the intermediate conclusions.

[JazzOne]

You're probably looking for conclusion indicator words like "therefore," "thus," etc. I find the premise indicator words to be more reliable. Phrases like "because," "since," "after all," and "for example" almost always precede premises.

[Ruxin1]

A conclusion is a CLAIM, so the connotation of claim helped me a lot. DK if that makes sense to you tho :/

[bp shinners]

A few quick-and-dirty tips:

1) Ask yourself what the author wants you to believe, and not just the things he tells you; that's the conclusion
2) If there is an opinion expressed, that's likely to be the conclusion
3) If you're between two propositions, read them as follows:
Proposition A, therefore Proposition B
Proposition B, therefore Proposition A
Of those two, the one that makes more sense has the conclusion after the 'therefore'

[arkansawyer]

Read better

[kaseyb002]

Is the phrase/sentence supporting another phrase or sentence? If so, then it's a premise. The conclusion is the one phrase/sentence that isn't trying to support something else [edit: To be more exact, the conclusion is the one phrase/sentence that isn't supporting any other sentence AND is being supported by the other sentences. I say that because there is always the chance that there is some pointless, unrelated sentence in the stimulus that is neither supporting or being supported]. I found this framework to be helpful with intermediate conclusions.

You can't just look at the language of each individual sentence; you have to see the structure of the entire stimulus.