Difference between premise, stimulus, argument and conclusion

[christinecwt]

Sorry all - can anyone help explain the difference between these four concepts - "premise", "stimulus", "arguments" and "conclusion". They sounds a bit similar but appear in different chapters of logical reasoning respectively?

Many thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Happy to, christinecwt!

A stimulus is the short set of statements at the beginning of a logical reasoning question, because you get to the question stem where they ask you to do something like weaken, or identify an assumption, or resolve a paradox, etc. The stimulus might contain an argument or it might just have some facts in it. It could be a single statement or many statements.

An argument is made up of at least one premise and at least one conclusion. A premise is a statement used by an author to try to prove or support some other statement that they also explicitly made in the stimulus. Think of a premise as evidence, and the conclusion is the inference drawn by the author based on that evidence. There can be no premises without there also being a conclusion, and there can be no conclusion without there being at least one premise. But when you have them both, you combine them to make an argument.

Here's an illustration:

"I have two dogs, and they are each under 20 pounds."

This is not a premise, because I am not using it to prove something. It's not a conclusion, because I gave you no evidence to support it. It's not an argument. It's just a couple of facts.

"I have two dogs, and they are each under 20 pounds. They are too small to make good guard dogs."

Still no argument, no premises, and no conclusion, because I didn't try to use one of these statements to support another statement. I still just gave you some facts without trying to draw an inference based on those facts. But now look at this:

"I have two dogs, and they are each under 20 pounds, so they are too small to make good guard dogs."

The inclusion of the word "so" changes everything! Now I have a premise - my two dogs are each under 20 pounds - that I used to support another statement, a conclusion - they are too small to make good guard dogs. When combined, the premise and conclusion make up an argument. It's all in how I use the statements that determines whether there is an argument of not. By attempting to prove one thing by saying that another thing is true, I have gone from merely reciting facts to making an argument.

When you identify an argument in an LR stimulus (an attempt by the author to prove one statement by relying on other statements), focus on the conclusion (that portion of the argument that they are trying to prove.) That's going to be a key step in determining what will weaken, or strengthen, or justify the conclusion, and it will help you to understand what assumptions were made and what flaws were committed.

One last thing: most of the time, when students confuse terms here, they treat "argument" as synonymous with "conclusion." Avoid that! The argument is the complete package, the combination of premises and conclusions. The conclusion is just one piece of that package!

[christinecwt]

Thanks Adam! Your explanation help resolve my questions a lot Thanks a lot!