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Is it the first sentence of "Doctors should never prescribe sedatives for people with insomnia."

Or is the last part of the stimulus stating that insomniacs need psychotherapy to help alleviate stress causing their insomnia.


I use the therefore test, but I can see either one supporting the other.

It is difficult to realize whether a prescriptive sentence of should or ought is a premise or a conclusion. You almost always see prescriptive language as a conclusion, yet in this case, how can one be certain which is a premise and which is a conclusion?

Just because a doctor should never prescribe a sedative, doesnt mean that the insomniac needs psyhcotherapy. However, because we know that insomniacs need psychotherapy, it follows that a doctor should not be prescribing sedatives as they are not part of psychotherapy. It would seem that the first sentence is the main conclusion.

Are you assuming the author is not making a terrible argument of a false choice? Since we cannot do sedatives, we need to do psychotherapy. How do you know that this is not occurring in this stimulus.

You are assuming that we know that patients need psychotherapy. Are you not presupposing that as evidence rather than a conclusion?

timmydoeslsat wrote:Are you assuming the author is not making a terrible argument of a false choice? Since we cannot do sedatives, we need to do psychotherapy. How do you know that this is not occurring in this stimulus.

This is exactly why the last statement is not the main conclusion

Why couldnt the psychologist's argument conclude that we need to do A because we cannot do B?

timmydoeslsat wrote:Why couldnt the psychologist's argument conclude that we need to do A because we cannot do B?

Because thats a bad argument, and thats why it isnt the right answer choice, you could conlude that, but it would be wrong

Just because we don't need sedatives doesnt mean we need psychotherapy, we could need somethign entirely different. However, because we do need psychotherapy, we know we dont need sedatives.

breadbucket wrote:

timmydoeslsat wrote:Why couldnt the psychologist's argument conclude that we need to do A because we cannot do B?

Because thats a bad argument, and thats why it isnt the right answer choice, you could conlude that, but it would be wrong

Since this is a flaw question stem and the lsat is comprised of bad arguments, what grounds do you have to not pick the author's true conclusion based on it being a bad argument? That does not make sense.

breadbucket wrote:

timmydoeslsat wrote:Why couldnt the psychologist's argument conclude that we need to do A because we cannot do B?

Because thats a bad argument, and thats why it isnt the right answer choice, you could conlude that, but it would be wrong

Just because we don't need sedatives doesnt mean we need psychotherapy, we could need somethign entirely different. However, because we do need psychotherapy, we know we dont need sedatives.

But couldnt the main point of this psychologist be what people need to do? Isnt that the takeaway here?

timmydoeslsat wrote:

breadbucket wrote:

timmydoeslsat wrote:Why couldnt the psychologist's argument conclude that we need to do A because we cannot do B?

Because thats a bad argument, and thats why it isnt the right answer choice, you could conlude that, but it would be wrong

Just because we don't need sedatives doesnt mean we need psychotherapy, we could need somethign entirely different. However, because we do need psychotherapy, we know we dont need sedatives.

But couldnt the main point of this psychologist be what people need to do? Isnt that the takeaway here?

Yes, but they also need to not prescribe sedatives

I will leave it at this. You do agree that a false choice argument exists on the lsat and that it is a flaw. If it were the case that the first sentence is a premise and the last was a conclusion, that would be consistent with a false choice argument.

Premise 1: never do a
-------------
Conclusion: need to do b

You also have this underlying assumption that necessity of one thing is incompatible with another thing occurring. We can have the necessary thing take place and not preclude other things.

.

I have concern with an argument stating "Should not do X" and also, in the same argument saying what we need to do Y.

If we forget the context of this argument, and just on the scenario above, how would you go about determining the main conclusion of that? Would you also state that the main conclusion is to not do X or would you say that it is to do Y?

Although this argument is not valid, it only makes any sense at all if the first sentence is the conclusion.

Main conclusion questions on the LR section usually have pretty good, if not perfect, arguments. It's impossible to determine the conclusion of a truly incoherent argument, since none of the statements support each other. So, yeah, it's possible that whoever makes an argument like this could think some other statement is the conclusion, but the argument doesn't support that other statement at all. Which is why they don't ask you to find the main conclusion of arguments so riddled with flaws.

This is puzzling to me but reading over the remarks the concept is slowly being demystified..I actually found an argument of this nature in the LRB section on Method of Reasoning.

Would it help to mentally delete the first and second periods and replace them with "because" and "and," respectively?

Don't you guys follow the Ask the Experts forum? TimmydoesLsat is a troll.

Timmy actually isn't a troll. He actually wants to understand the ins-and-outs of arguments. He's trying to be thorough.

glucose101 wrote:Timmy actually isn't a troll. He actually wants to understand the ins-and-outs of arguments. He's trying to be thorough.

Yeah, Timmy's not a troll. Timmy is just... Timmy.

So, if he's not a troll, then we must assume everything he asks is in earnest and that he is truly trying to improve his understanding of the LSAT.
If that's the case, why does he dismiss every bit of advice that would actually help him understand the question, and instead try to provide reasons why the right answer is wrong? If he truly wants to understand the logic on a metta-LSAT level, aren't there plenty of logic forums in the webz to help him?

I would argue he clearly has no interest in understand the LSAT way of thinking or how to deconstruct an LSAT argument in order to answer the question correctly, he just wants to argue, argue, argue. To me, even though he sincerely cares about his inconsequential arguments, this makes him a troll.

Micdiddy wrote:So, if he's not a troll, then we must assume everything he asks is in earnest and that he is truly trying to improve his understanding of the LSAT.
If that's the case, why does he dismiss every bit of advice that would actually help him understand the question, and instead try to provide reasons why the right answer is wrong? If he truly wants to understand the logic on a metta-LSAT level, aren't there plenty of logic forums in the webz to help him?

shifty_eyed wrote:

Micdiddy wrote:So, if he's not a troll, then we must assume everything he asks is in earnest and that he is truly trying to improve his understanding of the LSAT.
If that's the case, why does he dismiss every bit of advice that would actually help him understand the question, and instead try to provide reasons why the right answer is wrong? If he truly wants to understand the logic on a metta-LSAT level, aren't there plenty of logic forums in the webz to help him?

Neither do I really:

^^^^Now I know how Shifty feels!!!
And it's great!

Micdiddy wrote:^^^^Now I know how Shifty feels!!!
And it's great!