Premise & Conclusion

[Jasminty]

I came up with a question regarding pg 70 of the 2022 version. It asks about the premises, but if there is no conclusion in the stimulus, does premise(s) exist?

On pg 26, it says "a premise can be defined as: A fact, proportion, or statement from which a conclusion is made." In this case, when there is no conclusion that's been derived, doesn't that mean that there's no premise?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Jasminty,

You're correct that premises are statements that support a conclusion, so if there is no conclusion, then those statements would simply be described as a set of facts.

I think that the wording for each of those questions in the drill is the same so as to not "give away" which stimuli contain arguments and which are just fact sets.

[Jasminty]

Hi Jasminty,

You're correct that premises are statements that support a conclusion, so if there is no conclusion, then those statements would simply be described as a set of facts.

I think that the wording for each of those questions in the drill is the same so as to not "give away" which stimuli contain arguments and which are just fact sets.

So, just to be clear, what you are saying is that it's said premise as in a fact set?

[Dave Killoran]

Jeff is right here in what I was doing, but in LSAT parlance a fact set to us is really just a set of premises, and conclusions can still be drawn from them even if not stated (and there are instances where fact sets have conclusions added later). The distinction you are trying to make here--not unreasonably--is not something the LSAT will test.

Thanks!