Strengthen/weaken questions Forum

[tmc07d]

If the question is a "strengthen/weaken" question (logical reasoning) would the answer be most likely found from the conclusion of the stimulus or through the premises or both?? These are giving me a bit of a hard time if anyone could please help me id appreciate it

[BrianOz1]

In a strengthen or weaken question there will only answer that does one of the aforementioned.

[policestate1234]

You're job is to weaken/strengthen the conclusion. Determine if its a causual, conditional or survey reasoning and then attack accordingly.

[tmc07d]

So correct answers will typically mirror the conclusion? Or am I reading this completely wrong.

[amorfati]

Personally, I don't think you need to apply the "causal, conditional, or survey" methodology in any particularly rigorous way. (Or at least I couldn't give you definitions of those, and I still did pretty well...)

My recommendation would be to first identify the conclusion, and then make sure you that when you analyze each potential answer, you are looking to see if it strengthens/weakens the conclusion, NOT just the premise(s). I found that often I would initially think a few of the answers sounded as if they could be right, but in many cases you can rule out most (if not all) wrong answers by recognizing that although they might support/weaken one part of the stimulus, they do not directly relate or extend to the conclusion.

Of course, to each their own - I know some people like to categorize questions and their components more than I do (especially with logic games, but that's a whole other discussion). I personally just kind of feel that it eats up a lot of time, but if it helps you, then go for it!

[policestate1234]

So correct answers will typically mirror the conclusion? Or am I reading this completely wrong.

No correct snswers will either strengthen or weaken the concludion.

[amorfati]

No, they won't necessarily mirror it, they will just make the conclusion more likely to be true. For instance:

P1: I see people walking out of my building with umbrellas.
P2: Many of them are also wearing rainboots.
P3: The weather channel said there was an 80% chance of rain today.

C: It is therefore raining outside right now.

Analysis: Now, it could be raining out, but maybe people are just taking umbrellas and rainboots because the weather channel said it might rain. So really, even though it is probably raining, we don't know for sure. On the other hand, if we added this premise:

P4: I just saw three people come into my building soaking wet.
...then we could be reasonably conclude that it's raining outside.


On the other hand, if we added this premise:

P5 (wrong answer): The local news also said there was an 80% chance of rain today.
...then we still don't have much more reason to think that it's actually raining out right now, since we already had that information, and for all we know the local news got their info from the weather channel.

[amorfati]

...Or another potential wrong answer I just thought of:

P: People take umbrellas with them only when rain is likely.

Analysis: This answer rules out the possibility that it might be, say, snowing instead of raining, or even that the chance of rain has changed for the day. So it impacts the premises, but it still gives us no reason to believe it is actually raining out right now.